While many local firms have complained that the unanticipated change of the area codes for almost all of Vietnamese provinces and cities would hurt their business, the executive of a telecom giant asserted on Wednesday there are solutions to the issue.

With the area codes of 59 cities and provinces set to change as of March 1, Vietnamese businesses will have to reprint any documents that include their phone numbers. They will also have to change their brand banners, ad signs, and product packaging.

Tran Manh Hung, general director of state-run telecom VNPT, said the company is “working on solutions to ensure the rights and interests of customers” when the new area codes are applied.

“We will allow the old area codes to be valid simultaneously with the new ones for three to six months,” Hung told Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper.

This means people can dial either the old or the new area code to make a phone call, which helps them get used to the new codes, he added.

“After this period of dual codes, if people still dial a number with the old code, they will be informed through the phone of the area code change, and instructed to make the correct phone call,” Hung said.

Four northern provinces, Phu Tho, Vinh Phuc, Hoa Binh, and Ha Giang, will see their area codes remain unchanged as 210, 211, 218 and 219, respectively, when a new decree issued by the Ministry of Information and Communications takes effect on March 1.

The other 59 provinces and cities will have new area codes, which have little similarity to the old ones, making it hard for people to remember them.

The area code of the central city of Da Nang, for instance, will be 236 instead of the current 511, while the respective numbers for Hai Phong in the north and Can Tho in the Mekong Delta will be 225 and 292, from the current 31 and 710.

The code for Hanoi will be 24 instead of 4, and Ho Chi Minh City, 28 instead of 8.

The sudden change of the area codes has left businesses in shock as most of them have completed their plans for the new year.

“This means we have to change our banners and product packaging,” said Lam Ngoc Minh, general director of Lien A Co., a Ho Chi Minh City-based mattress maker.

Minh said he will have to make 1,000 new banners for stores and dealerships countrywide and the company’s newly-printed packaging will become useless.

“We are only given two months to do all of these things. It is really too fast to handle,” he lamented.

Minh added that there will be other intangible damage when the area code is changed.

“Our partners and customers may face difficulty contacting us, and what if our foreign partners cannot reach us?” he said.

The area code change was unveiled at a time when landline phone subscribers are steadily declining, the Ministry of Information and Communications said in a press release on Wednesday.

“The total number of landline and mobile phone subscribers is around 130 million, and the landline phone only accounts for nearly seven million of these,” the ministry said.

Hung, from VNPT, also said mobile phone to mobile phone calls account for 97 percent of the total traffic of Vinaphone, one of the country’s largest network operators.

“Only about three percent are calls made from mobile phones to landline numbers, and there are very few home phone to home phone calls,” he said.

Landline phones are now mostly used by state offices and businesses, whereas most individual subscribers have switched to mobile phones, he added.

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