Does 3G quality increase in line with price?

While 4G is still a distant future, MobiFone's continuous large investments in infrastructure and improving the quality of 3G services are considered the right direction to attract a large number of customers.

MobiFone continuously improves 3G network. (Source: VMS)

3G quality is increasing?

The recent story of 3G price hikes has stirred up public opinion because the quality is on the decline. A survey by Nielsen and the Vietnam Post Newspaper published in May 2013 clearly showed that: The user satisfaction index for 3G service quality in the past year has slightly decreased, from 71/100 points (in 2011) to 64 points in 2012, even though the coverage area has improved.

But right after the network operator increased the price of 3G in October 2013, 3G users “felt” that the speed of the networks had improved. Mr. Le Xuan Hung (an office worker in Keangnam building, Hanoi) said that the most obvious sign of the increase in 3G quality was that he could still use OTT services to make calls when he had used up all his data at high speed, something he could not do before.

But, to be fair, if we talk about price increases to reinvest in infrastructure, it is clear that the quality of 3G networks cannot be changed so easily overnight.

In an exchange, a representative of a network operator said that in the past (before the increase of 3G), network operators have continuously invested significantly in infrastructure to better serve the needs of users.

In addition, the increase in 3G rates makes users "frugal" in their access (turn on 3G when needed and turn off 3G if not), making the bandwidth wider, leading to faster access than before.

MobiFone alone said that in 2013 it invested a large amount of money to upgrade its 3G network to HSPA+ (equivalent to 3.5G) with speeds up to 21.6Mbps and invested in a large number of base transceiver stations (BTS).

Notably, MobiFone's BTS station capacity is considered by experts to be the best in Vietnam to date. Up to 90% of MobiFone's Node B stations have the maximum configuration (HSPA+). Measurements in 1,500 areas show that 98% of areas have a Download speed of over 600Kbps; 90% of areas have a Download speed of over 1Mbps; 60% of areas have a Download speed of over 2Mbps.

The above figures show that MobiFone's network capacity is able to meet the needs of high-speed Mobile Internet access for surfing the web, watching movies on Youtube and sharing large files.

3G is still the mainstay

A leader of MobiFone said that currently the total number of the network's transmission stations has reached more than 34,000 stations and this number will continue to increase by about 4,000 stations in 2014. This is a great effort in upgrading the network, serving the needs of customers better and better.

Nielsen's survey also shows that, despite complaints about quality, users all acknowledge the increasingly important role of 3G in life and up to 48% of respondents are confident that 3G will replace ADSL broadband Internet access service.

At the November State Management Conference of the Ministry of Information and Communications held on December 5, the leader of the Telecommunications Department shared that there were many opinions suggesting to consider and adjust the deadline for deploying the 4G network earlier than expected in 2015.

However, Minister Nguyen Bac Son affirmed that the deployment of 4G must follow the roadmap and that this will be considered at the earliest in 2015. The reason for this is that the 3G network capacity is still not fully utilized and when the network operator invests a large amount of money in 3G infrastructure, people also have to spend a lot of money to buy compatible devices. Therefore, "upgrading to 4G" will cause great waste for both businesses and society.

That said, for at least the next two years, 3G networks will still be the mainstay in people's mobile Internet access anytime, anywhere.

Therefore, according to MobiFone's leaders, to truly win the hearts of customers, MobiFone's strategy will be to continuously improve system capacity and launch the best services on 3G to meet the increasing demands of "Customers"./.

According to VNA