Leading mobile systems supplier Ericsson has signed an agreement with Viettel, Vietnam’s third largest mobile phone company, to expand its GSM network. The Swedish firm is to provide Viettel, which is run by the Vietnamese military, with core and radio network access equipment, service layer platforms, network rollout and support services. Since its launch last October, Viettel has gained 500,000 subscribers, and it aims to triple this figure by the end of the year. In April, the company announced that it had been given the go-ahead by the government to adopt a corporate business model, allowing it to develop more quickly and expand its business scope. The company managed to break the Vietnam Post and Telecommunication Corporation’s monopoly in international telecom services last year, when it inaugurated its satellite-fed international telecom gate in the northern province of Ha Tay.
