In his speech, Minister of Information and Communications Nguyen Manh Hung said that the support package is to answer the call of General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Vietnam Nguyen Phu Trong and the direction of Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh regarding financial aid in the fourth Covid-19 outbreak.
This support package consists of many promotion packages worth VND10,000 billion (approx. US$435.2 million) for citizens with an increasing use of telecoms services by 50 percent but still paying the same fee. The low-income receive a reduction in service plan fee.
Minister Hung stressed that during this harsh time, telecoms might be the only method to connect between citizens and the authorities to ask for help. In addition, a rise in telecoms use means a quicker digital transformation process.
However, he reminded telecoms enterprises that a data capacity increase by 50 percent must go along with quality maintenance. To achieve this requires all telecoms service providers to optimize their hardware, ready for post-Covid-19 development in the near future.
The information-communications industry is now trying its best to ensure offer communication and goods delivery to all households in the country, while ensuring a clean and safe virtual environment for Internet users to share useful and valid information, software related to Covid-19 fight.
Head of Vietnam Telecommunications Authority Hoang Minh Cuong informed that right at the beginning of the outbreak, the Information and Communications Ministry directed all telecoms enterprises to devise solutions and programs to help citizens, under various forms of service plan fee reduction, free data capacity use, propaganda campaigns to raise awareness, and technological platform development, as well as direct financial contribution of over VND1,000 billion ($43.5 million) to the National Covid-19 Vaccine Fund.
In the support package this time, Viettel, VNPT, CMC, MobiFone, Vietnamobile maintain the bandwidth double with the same price.
SCTV decreases its optical Internet service fee by 25 percent so that learning and working activities from home can be smoothly carried out. Its data service plans of VX3 and VX7 receives a fee reduction by 50 percent. New subscribers have 50 percent more data capacity with the same service plan fee. Each time a VX3/VX7 service plan is successfully extended or registered, VND5,000 ($0.22) will be given to the National Covid-19 Vaccine Fund.
Meanwhile, access to the formal information portals of the Health Ministry, Bluezone app will be free. The calls to Covid-19 hotlines are also free.
Subscribers of Viettel, VNPT, MobiFone, Vietnamobile living in areas under Directive 16 will have 50 minutes of on-net calls to their relatives every day free of charge.
Mobile network carriers of MobiFone, VinaPhone and Viettel yesterday also announced their own financial support solutions to citizens, which will be launched from August 5 and will last for 3 months.
Since the beginning of 2020, Viettel, VNPT, MobiFone have contributed nearly VND21,000 billion ($914 million) to Covid-19 fight activities.
