Mobile TV service of Unitel. The company has installed 4,000 base transceiver stations and 23,000km of fibre-optic cable across Laos to bring telecom services to all districts in Laos and 95 per cent of its population. — Photo youtube.com

HA NOI (Biz Hub) — Unitel, the brand name of Viettel in Laos, reached US$1 billion in cumulative revenue in seven years of operation in the country.

Being the second overseas brand name of Viettel, after Metfone in Cambodia, Unitel has rapidly become the number one mobile network provider in Laos. It made a cumulative profit of more than $300 million.

Unitel has 2.5 million subscribers, accounting for 47 per cent of mobile market share and 35 per cent of broadband market share.

The company has installed 4,000 base transceiver stations and 23,000km of fibre-optic cable across Laos to bring telecom services to all districts in Laos and 95 per cent of its population. In particular, the company has been providing the 4G service since June last year.

Unitel has helped to change the telecommunication market significantly with mobile use increasing from 18 per cent in 2009 to 68 per cent in 2016. It has created jobs for more than 4,000 locals, while an additional 20,000 indirect jobs have been created through their collaborator programmes and partners.

According to a report made public in April this year by Brand Finance, an independent intangible asset valuation consultancy based in the United Kingdom, Unitel is the number one effective telecommunication brand name in ASEAN. Its brand value increased by 106 per cent compared with 2015, reaching $132 million.

Till mid-September 2016, Viettel had increased its foreign subscribers to 26 million in Laos, Cambodia, East Timor and Cameroon, as well as Haiti, Mozambique, Burundi, Peru and Tanzania, bringing the total to 90 million subscribers (including Viet Nam). The company has been listed among the top 30 telecommunication groups with the highest number of subscribers in the world according to statistics of GSMA Intelligence.

The company earned $493.8 million in revenue from its overseas markets in the first six months of this year, a year-on-year increase of 13 per cent.

In the domestic market, Viettel recently erected a mobile base transceiver station to serve 1,000 workers working to drill a tunnel in Ca Hill. Since the hill is located in a forest, the military-owned company had to install 3km of fibre-optic cable.

Work on the 13.4km tunnel between the central provinces of Phu Yen and Khanh Hoa began in late 2012. Designed and built by Vietnamese engineers and workers, it is the second longest tunnel in the country after Hai Van.

"It is Viettel's social responsibility to serve engineers and workers involved in a national project," Trinh Ai Duong, deputy director of Viettel Phu Yen, said. — VNS