S-Fone needs to find its voice

In the recent past S-Fone’s managing director Pham Tien Thinh left his post after failing to find a common voice with current leadership in respect to the company’s development orientations.

“Radical changes took place at S-Fone in the past year and the company’s new development directions are different from what I formerly outlined with the management. In this context, I thing the best way is to concede my current post to other more suitable people,” said Thinh.

However, at this time S-Fone’s parent company Saigon Postel (SPT) has yet to release any information relevant to Thinh leaving.

Ministry of Information and Communications (MIC) figures show that the market share of S-Fone shed from 0.1 per cent in 2011 to 0.02 per cent in the first half of 2012.

It’s two ‘life buoys’- parent company SPT and strategic partner SaigonTel- are bogged down in difficulties on the back of persistent economic woes.

Besides, at this time S-Fone reportedly has yet to finalise tackling the problem relevant to unpaid wages, severance allowances and social insurance fees to workers who were made redundant in mid-2012 when the ailing network caries out a technical process of changing from a corporation to a limited liability company status.

For example, despite winning in a late July 2012 case former head of S-Fone Hanoi customer-care service department has yet to get back VND51 million ($2,400) severance pay and associated interest due to late repayment following a verdict from the People’s Court in Hanoi’s Hoan Kiem district.

Despite more than once sending letters to S-Fone asking about further steps involving the case, the former head got no feedback from the company in return.

This amount, however, is just a drop in the bucket compared to the big sum VND41 billion ($1.9 million) unpaid severance allowance and social insurance fee S-Fone owed to its former employees.

This means the ambitious plan SPT has outlined for S-Fone concerning the launching of a 3G network and hiking the number of base transceiver stations by six fold in 2013 could hardly come true. The plan came after S-Fone got the MIC’s go-ahead to change from CDMA into HSPA technology.