Telecom giants shake up top brass

VNPT - illustration photo

On December 16 Tran Manh Hung, general director of VNPT, was promoted to chairman, replacing Pham Long Tran who will be retired on March 1, 2015. Hung’s task is to push forward with the restructuring of VNPT in 2015 and lead the company in its battle to compete with similarly giant telecom Viettel.

In March 2014 Viettel replaced former general director Hoang Anh Xuan with Nguyen Manh Hung. Since assuming his new position, Hung has made key decisions concerning the company’s operations, including replacing many key leaders.

According to him, his goal is to make Viettel a global company that has a top three position in any market it invests in. Viettel plans to expand into 25 countries and have a foreign customer base of between 600 and 800 million by 2020, making it one of the ten biggest telecoms in the world.

MobiFone and VinaPhone have also changed key personnel. On December 16 Mai Van Binh officially took over the chairman position at MobiFone while Le Nam Tra on December 11 became general director.

Binh was MobiFone’s former general director and Tra had held an important role in its restructuring.

On July 4 this year, Cao Duy Hai, former deputy general director of MobiFone and then deputy general director of Vinaphone was promoted to the position of general director of VinaPhone to replace Lam Hoang Vinh.

The appointment came at a time that VNPT was asking the Ministry of Information and Communication’s permission to let Vinaphone focus only on selling VNPT services, rather than maintaining its network after the group restructures.

The personnel changes at all of these different telecom firms happened in the context of significant market pressure and particularly a drop in revenue from mobile services, partly due to the boom in over-the-top services. In 2013 revenue from mobile services in Vietnam topped $5 billion, down 21.3 per cent on year.