Peru’s Telecommunications Regulatory Agency announced that at the end of the second quarter Bitel had 5.1 million subscribers equivalent to a market share of 13.5 per cent.

For three straight years from 2015 this Viettel Group company achieved the fastest growth in subscriber numbers in the South American country.

This rapid growth pushed the growth rate in subscriber numbers to 30 per cent in 2014-18 compared to 6 per cent in other countries in the region.

Mobile penetration density had nearly stopped increasing beyond 94 per cent in Peru at the time the company began operations in 2014, but has now reached 124 per cent. In neighbouring countries it only increased by 5 percentage points in this period.

Bitel was Viettel’s first operation in any country that was wealthier than Viet Nam.

The company quickly raced far ahead of its competitors in terms of mobile infrastructure though they had been in the market for decades, and possessed the largest fibre-optic network, which at 26,000km was 1.5 times that of its nearest rival.

Bitel has become the operator with the largest area of data coverage. It skipped 2G and went straight to 3G and 4G networks, and is now considered the best internet service provider in Peru.

Its 4G network has 3,200 stations, four times the number its nearest competitor has.

After breaking even within two years Bitel has become the largest revenue earner for Viettel (US$30 million per month on average) among its 10 markets.

The company now has 1,700 permanent employees and provides indirect employment to another 10,000.

It is also the only operator to provide free internet to schools, with nearly 1 million students in 4,500 schools benefiting, and to health facilities and government agencies. — VNS