The Military Telecom Corporation (Viettel) has won a silver Stevie Awards in the category of New Consumer Service of the Year for its ethnic minority language mobile phone services.

HA NOI (Biz Hub) — The Military Telecom Corporation (Viettel) has won a silver Stevie Awards in the category of New Consumer Service of the Year for its ethnic minority language mobile phone services.

The awards ceremony to honour the winners was held in Seoul, the Republic of Korea, last week.

The switchboard, the first of its kind that made debut in Viet Nam in January 2013, provides ethnic minority users with a wide range of entertainment services such as storytelling, music programmes and farming guidance in their mother tongues.

With over 120 telephone operators and an automatic answer calls switchboard providing inquiry services in 10 ethnic minority languages, the telecom firm has served as many as 2.5 million customers over the last year, or an average 30,000 calls each day, according to the group.

Viet Nam is home to about 12 million people of ethnic minority groups, accounting for 15 per cent of the nation's population. However, only 25 per cent or three million people use mobile services. — VNS