Phone tariffs cut by up to 20%

VietNamNet Bridge – The Viet Nam Post and Telecommunications Group (VNPT) last Friday said it would unify tariffs of several of its phone services in a bid to trigger demand.
The country's biggest telecom firm said the unified tariff of VND1,000 per minute, effective from next month, would be applied to all inter-provincial calls between VNPT’s fixed-phone subscribers, a reduction of 20 per cent from the current rate.
The same tariff would also be applied to calls from VNPT’s fixed telephones to all Vinaphone mobile phones (post-paid and pre-paid) and from Vinaphone post-paid mobiles to fixed phones, a 30 per cent drop on current tariffs.
Meanwhile, calls from post-paid mobile Vinaphone subscribers to all its mobile subscribers (post-paid and pre-paid) will be VND1,000 per minute, down 20 per cent.
In addition, calls from post-paid mobile subscribers of the MobiFone network to all MobiFone mobile subscribers (post-paid and pre-paid) will enjoy the unified tariff, which offers a 10 per cent drop on the current tax.
All calls will be charged in six-second blocks, then one-second blocks, the company said.
VNPT now has 11 million fixed-phone subscribers and more than 30 million mobile subscribers to its Vinaphone and MobiFone networks.
The company last year posted total revenue of VND45.300 trillion (US$2.8 billion), 3.61 per cent more than its initial plan.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Vietnam, Russia to increase press cooperation

VietNamNet Bridge – Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has hailed a press cooperation agreement between Russia and Vietnam, saying that the agreement will intensify the level of friendship and multifaceted cooperation between the two countries.

President Medvedev made this statement in Moscow on October 27 following the signing of an agreement between the Vietnam News Agency (VNA) and the Russian news agency, ITAR-TASS, during President Nguyen Minh Triet’s official working visit to Russia .

The agreement between VNA and ITAR-TASS will help the people of the two nations to improve their mutual understanding, particularly regarding culture, customs and tourism, whilst contributing towards boosting the existing friendship and multifaceted cooperation between the two countries, he said.

Under the terms of the agreement, VNA and ITAR-TASS will increase their exchange of information and the number of visits by delegations in order to learn more from each other’s experiences and assist each other in the use of new technologies, the training of personnel and the production of media publications.

On the previous day, ITAR-TASS’s General Director Vitaly Ignatenko held a meeting with VNA’s Managing Deputy General Director Tran Mai Huong, during which the two sides discussed specific measures to expand the scope of the two news agencies’ traditional cooperation.

The two sides shared the view that the new agreement will help VNA and ITAR-TASS to diversify their areas of coordination and work together more efficiently in the future.
Russian media praises cooperation with Vietnam
On the occasion of Vietnamese President Nguyen Minh Triet’s official visit to Russia, local media has released articles praising the cooperative ties between the two countries.

The four-day visit from October 26 will boost the strategic relations between Russia and Vietnam in general, and their economic and trade ties in particular, local media including RIA-Novosti, Itar-Tass, and the Voice of Russia Radio, said on October 27.

Russian media said trade turnover between Russia and Vietnam in the first seven months of the year grew 64.8 percent to nearly 900 million USD, with Russian exports to the Southeast Asian country growing 70 percent, and it may reach a record 1.6 billion USD by the end of 2008.

Especially, Vietsovpetro has produced over 175 million tonnes of crude oil since the joint venture’s foundation in 1986, and Russian profits have totalled 7.3 billion USD, it added.

According to the Russian media, during the Vietnamese leader’s visit to Russia, the two sides will look at large-scale machine-building, mining and telecommunications and energy projects. Besides, cooperation on humanitarian issues, including culture, education, personnel training and mass media will also be on the agenda.

The two sides will also consider coordination of efforts in the Asia Pacific formats, such as ASEAN, the ASEAN Regional Security Forum and others. They will discuss broader partnership within the Russia-ASEAN framework.

The previous official visits of the Vietnamese leaders to Russia were paid in 1998 and 2004. Meanwhile, Vietnam is the only state in Southeast Asia visited by the Russian president twice, in 2001 and in 2006, the media stressed.