In its business philosophy, Viettel clearly states: The foundation for a business to develop is society. Viettel is committed to reinvesting in society by linking its business activities with social activities.
Before Viettel entered the mobile market, there were only about 2,000 broadcast stations nationwide. In the 1990s, mobile phones were luxury items, costing 4-5 million VND each. Mobile service was expensive, with connection fees of 1.5 million VND, maintenance fees of 300,000 VND per month, and postpaid rates of 8,000 VND per minute.
People still remember the anecdote that one minute of mobile talk time equaled the cost of two bowls of pho (a bowl of pho cost around 4,000 VND back then), making mobile service a luxury for the wealthy.
Despite the introduction of mobile signals in Vietnam in 1993, the service remained unaffordable for the majority for another decade. It wasn't until October 2004, when Viettel officially launched its mobile services, that everything changed.
Viettel's dream back then was simple: "Every Vietnamese should have a mobile phone". Many thought this was impossible since even urban dwellers found mobile service too expensive, let alone rural or less developed areas.
What Viettel achieved afterward proved otherwise.
A mobile network provider was born with the initial goal of making mobile services accessible to everyone, prioritizing rural areas where most people were poor. This is a prime example of "business with social conscience".
Regarding network infrastructure, while competitors focused mainly on urban areas, Viettel—an industry newcomer—chose to cover remote areas, border regions, and islands. To achieve this, Viettel employees came up with groundbreaking initiatives like designing networks in a honeycomb pattern and standardizing BTS (Base Transceiver Station) installation according to regional characteristics.
This allowed the planning and positioning of thousands of BTS stations to be completed in just one day instead of several years. The construction and installation of these stations were excellently executed by employees who, despite lacking extensive experience, were filled with enthusiasm and dedication.
This "newbie" managed to swiftly build a network of 5,000 stations across the country, successfully implementing the strategy of "rural areas surrounding urban areas". After the infrastructure was in place, Viettel understood that to make mobile services universal, the next crucial step was to make it affordable, so customers wouldn't feel burdened by owning a mobile phone.
Low-cost packages with attractive promotions, while maintaining good call quality and extensive coverage, created a mobile revolution for economically disadvantaged groups.
In the eyes of Dr. Mai Liem Truc, former Deputy Minister of Posts and Telecommunications, Viettel "changed the country" with its mobile universalization feat. "Every day, sitting at home, looking outside, I see vegetable vendors, motorbike taxi drivers, and scrap collectors occasionally taking out their phones to make calls. I am very moved" Dr. Mai Liem Truc expressed.
Beyond creative and rapid methods, the core reason behind Viettel's success in making mobile services universal in Vietnam is the belief that everyone, regardless of wealth or generation, should have equal access to technology. This belief has borne sweet fruit.
Commenting on Viettel's strategy to universalize mobile services, former President Truong Tan Sang, who was the Head of the Central Economic Commission when Viettel launched its services, recalled: "Everyone benefits. After entering the telecommunications business, Viettel became the fastest-growing and most successful company, not only reducing telecommunications service costs but also contributing to the country's economic development”.
Later on, the strategy of "rural areas surrounding urban areas" helping people in less developed regions access technology proved effective when Viettel invested abroad. In countries like Haiti, Burundi, and Mozambique, Viettel created similar telecommunications revolution stories as in Vietnam.
Metfone employees, Viettel's brand in Cambodia, support services in a small village near the border. Accessible technology for everyone is the approach that helped Viettel succeed in Vietnam and many other markets.
Viettel's "mobile phone popularization" strategy from 20 years ago bears a strong resemblance to Tesla's electric vehicle development strategy. Unlike other car brands, Elon Musk (Tesla's owner) did not develop electric cars with the goal of protecting the environment as a form of "socially responsible business".
The billionaire considered creating an environmentally friendly car with superior performance, supercar-like aesthetics, and reasonable cost as the core strategy to elevate Tesla to the number one position in the automotive industry. Of course, like Viettel, both had to undertake unprecedented tasks and achieve unprecedented results to turn something seemingly illogical into something logical and eventually set a common standard for everyone.
When the experience of 130 million customers drives breakthroughs!
Viettel's proudest achievement in the past 35 years is not becoming a key economic group that consistently contributes the most to the national budget; rather, it is the persistent and continuous realization of the vision "Innovate for people," with the philosophy: when technology advances, no one is left behind. Here, technology originates from empathy, desire, and the wish to bring a better life to people.
When Viettel's Autonomous System - the automated network operation system - was introduced at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2024, many experts focused on the safety, quick issue resolution, cost, and energy savings it brings. However, Viettel's primary goal in developing this system was customer service experience.
Viettel's Autonomous System - the automated network operating system - was introduced at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2024
With the previous network operating system, BTS stations required staff to monitor 24/7 to promptly handle arising situations or go on-site for system maintenance. Thus, maintaining stations in remote areas was very difficult, and service quality was not high. Not to mention, encountering power issues made service interruptions in these areas almost inevitable...
With a network operator operating in 11 countries worldwide, having to manage about 100,000 BTS stations daily, with many stations in remote areas and even places without electricity, this was no small issue. On such a large scale, to ensure a good and optimized network quality, network automation and intelligence were necessary.
Similar to the early days of mobile operations, Viettel chose a path no other network operator in the world had taken: self-developing the network operation system. And when that network was put into operation, the benefits extended beyond just improving service quality or customer experience.
With the Autonomous System, Viettel's BTS stations do not need personnel to operate and maintain them yet still ensure high performance without errors. This system also ensures that each customer call and mobile data session remains seamless and stable, from high mountainous regions like Yen Minh, Ha Giang to island districts like Truong Sa and many remote areas in international markets such as the Amazon jungle in Peru.
Previously, during inspection periods, Viettel engineers had to spend nearly a day crossing forests or rivers, across seas... to each remote station. With this system, they only need to sit in the control room and operate the system within minutes.
Viettel's network incident response time decreased from 15-30 minutes to only 1-2 minutes, with users hardly noticing any service interruption. In Vietnam alone in 2023, the Autonomous System automatically handled 370,000 alerts, achieving a success rate of over 90% with fewer than 20 engineers.
Thanks to the automated operation system, Viettel can increase the efficiency of 100,000 BTS stations, extend the lithium battery run-time by 20% compared to usual (in areas without the national power grid). Compared to traditional operations, Viettel estimates this system helps reduce emissions by about 1 million tons of CO2 annually, equivalent to planting 17 million trees.
Globally and in Vietnam, the technology market is rapidly evolving with the rise of new technological trends and sustainable development trends, notably green transformation.
Thus, the production and provision of products and services are gradually being "greened." For many businesses, this is only an additional part, starting from less important tasks and then gradually spreading to core business activities, which are more difficult to change.
In reality, many organizations still see green transformation as beneficial in the long term but costly and reducing immediate business efficiency. In this context, as it once did with the telecommunications industry, Viettel chose green orientation as a development strategy that is "one arrow hitting two targets": Increasing efficiency, enhancing competitiveness and differentiation in both short and long term, while reducing costs.
Viettel's logistics sector is fully leveraging this trend. When talking about sustainable development, most think that businesses need to use environmentally friendly materials or change operating vehicles and accept higher costs. However, Viettel's green logistics starts with technology that is neither more expensive nor more complex.
With the "mobile post office" technology, each truck and postal worker is connected to post offices through a data-sharing application. Intermediate steps are minimized, reducing transportation distances by 15% and the number of transit vehicles.
Inside Vietnam's first smart sorting complex, AGV robots are applied. The error rate of the complex is nearly zero, shortening the overall delivery time from 8-10 hours, increasing production by 3.5 times.
Recently, in early 2024, Viettel launched Vietnam's first smart sorting complex using AGV robots. The complex’s error rate is nearly zero, shortening the overall delivery time from 8-10 hours, increasing production by 3.5 times. Thanks to automation, labor costs are estimated to be optimized by 60%.
It is estimated that in 2023 alone, 2,313 tons of CO2 were saved, not released into the environment thanks to various measures: Investing in electric vehicles to reduce emissions, optimizing load for each trip, optimizing activities in warehouses to minimize energy consumption; using trains or ships to transport goods over long distances, consuming less fuel than trucks.
"Mobile post offices" or smart industrial sorting complexes are solutions that require significant investment in both money and effort, and Viettel is the first company in Vietnam to determine to implement them. Immediately afterward, Viettel aims to deploy logistics parks, smart border gates, supply chain systems, international intermodal rail transport... to successfully build national logistics infrastructure.
And consumers are the main beneficiaries. Logistics costs in Vietnam will continue to decrease, and goods will reach customers faster.
Green digital infrastructure strategy
In early April 2024, Viettel Group inaugurated Vietnam's first green data center (DC) in Hoa Lac, with a total power capacity of up to 30kW—the largest in Vietnam. This center is designed to handle large tasks in the field of AI and artificial intelligence.
This is also Vietnam's first DC built with green credit from HSBC Global Bank—only granted to projects that pass strict financial sustainability management and approval processes.
Not many companies in the same field choose to build similar green DCs. The familiar reason is that business efficiency and sustainable development are often inversely proportional. Green data centers require significantly larger investments than traditional DCs.
The application and successful deployment of new technologies is also a significant challenge that enterprises need to overcome, alongside the question of how to maximize efficiency while reducing costs to provide customers with good services at reasonable prices.
Viettel has gradually found the solution to this tough problem. Thanks to the successful application of many new technologies, Viettel’s DC PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness) is only 1.4 to 1.5, the lowest in Vietnam (the usual PUE is 1.6-1.7). Simply put, each calculation performed at Viettel's green DC consumes less electricity compared to other DCs.
In the planned strategy, Viettel will inaugurate 3 more green-standard DCs with a total capacity of up to 240 MW—eight times the capacity of Vietnam's largest current green DC. The longer-term goal is to use 20-30% renewable energy to operate DCs in Vietnam when legal regulations allow.
"Viettel particularly focuses on creating environmentally friendly solutions and products" affirmed Mr. Nguyen Dinh Chien, Deputy General Director of Viettel Group. Accordingly, the green digital infrastructure strategy not only opens a new chapter for Viettel but also for Vietnam's DC industry.
Amidst the trend of nations clearly recognizing the importance of green development and the government's determination to implement national digital economy and digital society strategies, Viettel IDC's smart data center demonstrates Viettel's forward-looking vision on its sustainable development journey. This is also a solid step forward for Viettel in asserting its mission of "pioneering in creating a digital society”.
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