Viettel, VinaPhone, MobiFone stop selling SIM cards at agents

All three operators Viettel, VinaPhone and MobiFone have announced that they will stop selling roaming kits (KIT) at authorized dealers and stop connecting the subscriber numbers of these agents since June 2020.

Accordingly, telecommunications businesses will focus on selling SIMs, registering subscriber information at the service providers’ own network.

This is in the context of Vietnam currently has 96 million people but owns more than 125 million mobile subscribers. The average mobile phone ownership rate in Vietnam is 1.3 subscribers per person. This fact shows that the development of mobile subscribers in Vietnam is almost saturated.

Viettel, VinaPhone, MobiFone stop selling SIM cards at agents.

Instead of growing the number of subscribers, carriers now need to focus on improving the quality of service. Besides, telecom businesses also need to find ways to deploy new services to expand the growth space.

The emergence of new services on mobile platforms such as Mobile Money requires subscriber information to be accurate. Therefore, the decision to stop selling SIM cards at the agents was proactively launched by the network operators to correct the situation of junk SIM in the market.

Since 2019, the Ministry of Information and Communications has conducted a nationwide inspection of the registration and management of subscriber SIM information. The inspection results showed that there is still a situation where garbage SIM has been pre-entered with subscriber information and activated prepaid mobile service. Mobile users can easily find available activation SIM without having to register or declare subscriber information.

According to the representative of Department of Telecommunications (Ministry of Information and Communications), these violations mainly occurred at authorized agents of telecommunication enterprises. On the basis of inspection conclusions, the Ministry of Information and Communications has sent a first reminder to the heads of the mobile telecommunications enterprises about the problem of junk SIMs and pre-activated SIMs.

According to inspection conclusions, the sale of junk SIMs and pre-activated SIM cards mainly takes place at authorized agents of telecommunication enterprises.

Commenting on the decision to stop selling the network adapter at authorized agents of Viettel, VinaPhone and MobiFone, the representative of the Telecommunications Department said that this is an action showing a serious and drastic handling of the situation of junk SIM. .

“These strong measures will be an important solution to prevent and handle junk SIM, ensure the accuracy of subscriber information, and contribute to ensuring safety, security and social order”, representative of the Department. Telecommunications said.

Before the question of whether stopping the sale of SIMs through agents affects users, the representative of Telecommunications Department affirmed that the network operators will create favorable conditions for people wishing to buy SIMs, register rent information. as well as other telecommunications services.

Through the exchange, the Telecommunications Department is known that in this time, telecommunications businesses will increase the expansion of the system of stores and deploy mobile telecommunications service providers of the network.

According to the representative of the Department of Telecommunications, the network operators are also proposing the Ministry of Information and Communications to consider and deploy the plan of selling SIM, registering subscriber information online.

At this time, people need not directly go to transaction points but can register online. The set SIM card is registered fully, exactly the information will then be sent to the place by the network.