Viettel Cameroun S.A.R.L, a joint venture between the Vietnamese military-run Viettel Group and Bestinver Cameroun S.A.R.L, has been licensed to be the third mobile service operator in Cameroon.

The company has won over other rival bidders including India's Bharti Airtel Ltd., Maroc Telecom and Korea Telecom for a mobile telecom tender that was launched earlier this year.

With a $400 million investment, Viettel "will be covering some 81 percent of the national territory when it goes operational; and will use second and third generation (2G – 3G) technologies," said Minister of Telecommunications Jean Pierre Biyiti Bi-Essam in a statement released late Monday.

It will be competing against Orange, controlled by France Teleco, and South Africa's MTN Group, which have nine million subscribers among Cameroon's 20 million inhabitants, according to newswire 4-traders.com.

Cameroon is one of the few African countries to have only two mobile telecom operators. It has yet to deploy 3G infrastructure.

As a result, Viettel's involvement with early commitment to deploy 3G mobile network is considered a positive factor promoting the growth of the local telecommunications sector.

Cameroon is located in the western part of Central Africa region, has an area of 475,442 km2 with a population of over 20 million people.

Currently, the country has about 11 million subscribers, with a mobile penetration of about 50 percent.

Up to date, Viettel’s mobile service arm has made presence in Mozambique, Haiti, Laos and Cambodia.

The Viettel Group tops the list of 1,000 local businesses with the largest budget contribution, according to V1,000 report.

The report was based on the corporate income tax the businesses paid in 2011, its authors -- the Vietnam Report Company, the Tax Magazine, and newswire VietnamNet -- announced in late October.