The question, why the sale of Vimpelcom stake in joint venture with a $ 45 million, the corporation has invested a total of $ 463 million on the Beeline and still be profitable, while aspiring to become a network Beeline Mobile Wednesday in Vietnam by Michael Sasha Cluzel - Gtel Mobile CEO - still "hot"?

Admittedly, in recent years, mobile network Beeline has always "refresh" Vietnam's telecommunications market with a range of policy packages, cheap and attractive, quite remarkable and unprecedented in the market.

Most impressive is the package "Billionaire". Attraction of this package (to be applied from mid-May 9/2011 through 31/10/2011), making an average daily Beeline has gained more than 15,000 subscribers to activity, with similar growth nearly 400%. Then the package is "Billionaire 2".

Or, go back the first time, in July / 2009, when Beeline officially available in the market for package "champion cheap" - Big Zero, followed by the package "framework" called Big & Kool, all markers are generated and consumed in the craze that time.

All in all the packages that are on very cheap rates and cheaper than the regular service charges from other mobile networks.

From the perspective of Gtel Mobile, Michael Sasha Cluzel said that with the creation of the policy package, the business of Beeline still are on the right trajectory and development goals, nothing is too difficult for financial problems. In late 2011, he said that in 2012, Beeline will continue to promote activities for the network has quickly become the 4th largest market share.

However, Beeline also the difficulties of implementing their packages. It's time to build the package from the agency to approve and to manage and implement in practice. According to the understanding of VNS, a package of Beeline still "located at the" Ministry of Information and Communication over a month that has not been approved for the network deployment.

"The difficulties and the impact from policy rules both before and after the package has been implemented entrepreneurial spirit of the brothers in the business slowed down," said a representative of the Beeline.

However, the nature and causes deep, according to telecommunications experts, with a business' own pocket, "the business on the Vietnamese telecom market has shaped the major brands with" territory "of plus tens of millions of subscribers has been supported platforms are available, any tariff policies which, although very cheap as Beeline also difficult to compete and grow.

In fact, the average revenue of a subscriber (ARPU) of mobile networks in Vietnam, only about 3-4 USD / month. Hoang Ngoc Diep, a former General Director of Indochina Qualcomm, has many years of technology consulting for the telecommunications sector that, if all the deals are continuously added to the ARPU index of the major mobile networks only 2 USD / month.

Meanwhile, according to data from the GSM Association Mobile World (GSMA), the mobile network with the lowest prices in Zimbabwe, in 2009, the index should also have at least $ 2.7 ARPU is enough maintained when entering the market.

However, with Beeline, the minimum index ARPU seemed become distant.

ARPU Data as announced by major corporations for Vimpelcom Beeline mobile network in Vietnam in quarter 3/2011 is $ 0.7, quarter 4/2011 is $ 0.9, or the Beeline monthly ARPU levels are low, has achieved popular 1 USD / month, with less than half compared to ARPU of large networks.

While the initial goal of Beeline is cheap policy will attract a decent amount of subscribers, which will enhance the development of value-added services to increase revenue. However, the goal of attracting subscribers of mobile network was not as expected. According to the VNS has been, in active real-month chargeable (including calls, calls and SMS) Beeline average of only 2.5 million subscribers, is the time to rise nearly 3 million .

Try doing the calculation, with ARPU levels of 0.9 USD / month, just for the one month is 1 USD, Beeline revenue reached only $ 2.5 million, then in the last 6 months of 2011, Beeline reached only revenue of $ 13.5 million. Compared with the money that Vimpelcom extra $ 196 million it is clear, Beeline has serious loss. This does not include $ 267 million investment earlier.

Furthermore, due to the limitations on the size of network infrastructure, air quality is not good, plans to increase the network infrastructure (BTS) in just the cities were not developed strong dealer network also low, so the attraction of Beeline subscribers is not good. Beeline itself is not the only 3G network, so the development of value-added services and subscriber growth also becomes restricted.

He did not give specific losses of individual countries, but on VimpelCom Group's website, as of 2011, Vietnam and Cambodia are two markets that VimpelCom suffered losses, with a total amount of $ 527 million.

"Their intention is to follow policies cheap and attractive to get a number of subscribers, the hole can accept at first, but after a period of economic efficiency and long-term direction without open signs, they withdrew. That was understandable, "a veteran of telecommunications seen.