The Hanoi Times - The telecommunications industry, particularly the mobile phone sector, has seen the most significant price reductions over the first ten months of the year in its race to lure more customers, according to the General Statistics Office (GSO).Call charges during the January-October period were 12 percent lower than the average for the same period last year. These continued discounts are considered key to Vietnam ’s impressive development of its telecommunications industry over recent years.The country had almost 60 million cell phone subscribers as of October 2008, of which MobiFone and VinaPhone accounted for 30 million, and Viettel 19 million, the GSO reported.Most recently, the Vietnam Posts and Telecommunications Group (VNPT) decided to apply the same charge of 909.1 VND/minute to all intra-network calls from Nov. 1, a discount of 20 percent compared to previous charges.VNPT also allowed its mobile phone arms of VinaPhone and MobiFone to offer a discount of between 30-80 percent for off-peak calls.Previously, Viettel, which has the largest number of subscribers in Vietnam and is the first to provide a call-blocking service, offered discounts of 50-73 percent for its General Packet Radio Service (GPRS).The price war has been fueled by a decision taken by the Ministry of Information and Communications allowing service providers to self-regulate their tariffs.However, experts have suggested that, in addition to lowering prices, service providers focus o­n improving the quality of their services, which is key to customer attraction