Accordingly, 21 11-digit subscription codes of the five current mobile service providers in Vietnam will be affected by this campaign.
The following prefixes of Viettel, including 0162, 0163, 0164, 0165, 0166, 0167, 0168, and 0169, will be changed to 032, 033, 034, 035, 036, 037, 038, and 039.
The following prefixes of MobiFone, including 0120, 0121, 0122, 0123, 0126, and 0128, will be changed to 070, 079, 077, 076, and 078.
The following prefixes of VinaPhone, including 0123, 0124, 0125, 0127, and 0129, will be change to 083, 084, 085, 081, and 082.
The following prefixes of Vietnamobile, including 0188 and 1086 will be changed to 058 and 056.
The prefix 0199 of Gtel will be changed to 059.
Basically, after this change, 11-digit mobile phone subscribers still keep their last 7 digits.
The change will be applied from September 15, 2018 to June 30, 2019.
In the conversion process from September 15, 2018 to November 14, 2018, all phone service providers must allow normal calls to both the old and new numbers. They must also deliver bilingual notice in Vietnamese and English in that time.
According to explanation of the Ministry of Information and Communications, thanks to the swift development of science and technology, many forms of telecommunications have been created, from the old landline phone to the mobile service of 2G to 4G and the to-be 5G with Internet of Things.
Therefore, the Ministry needs to rearrange the storage of phone numbers in order to suit the long-term growth of the market and avoid the potential shortage of mobile phone numbers while landline phone ones are surplus.
This is to meet the projected demands of the digital economy, smart traffic, smart health, smart electricity, and Industry 4.0.
All 10-digit mobile phone numbers will not be affected by this campaign.
It is expected that this conversion will affect any products related to mobile phone numbers such as business cards, package covers, advertising panels and posters, or even stored phone-books in each telephone.
In the press conference, representatives of mobile network providers have not introduced any practical aid to mobile phone subscribers in the conversion process. However, they all confirmed that they would try their best to minimize the potential negative impacts on phone users.
