Viettel waives roaming fee for Indochinese country

Subscribers of Viettel in Vietnam, Metfone in Cambodia, and Unitel in Laos, all of which are managed by Vietnamese military-run telecom giant Viettel Group, will now only pay domestic fees for phone calls, text messages, and data service for using any of the three networks, regardless of their location within the Indochinese region.

Indochina is a geographical term referring to Southeast Asian countries Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, each of which was a French colony.

Specifically, Viettel users in Vietnam will be charged VND2,000 (US$0.09) per minute and VND500 (US$0.02) per text message when calling or texting Unitel or Metfone numbers.

The same rates apply to Viettel subscribers who travel to Laos or Cambodia and roam into Unitel or Metfone networks, and vice versa.

The previous roaming charges on the network of VND4,840 (US$0.22) per minute for receiving international phone calls have also been waived by the mobile network provider.

Viettel’s roaming data now cost VND200,000 (US$8.93) per gigabyte instead of the previous VND32.2 million (US$1,438) per gigabyte.

Over two million Viettel subscribers frequent Laos and Cambodia, but only 0.5% (nearly 10,000) use its roaming service, according to the company’s statistics.