With the three mobile operators that dominate the country’s telecom market simultaneously announcing their plan to increase 3G service fees by 40 percent last weekend, experts believe there is sign of a competition law violation.

Starting this week, the network operator triplet, including Vinaphone, MobiFone, and Viettel will be charging their 3G users VND70,000 a month, a rate subscribers consider unreasonable as the service quality remains poor.

As of the end of July, Vietnam had a total of 16 million active 3G subscribers, most of whom are mobile users (12.75 million).

MobiFone dominates the market with a 38.1 percent share, followed by Viettel (30.7 percent), and Vinaphone 28.5 percent. The remaining share is left for Vietnamobile.

The triplet collectively holds 97.3 percent of the market, and is thus recognized as the dominant group as per the Law on competition, according to a lawyer at the Ho Chi Minh City’s branch of the Pham and Associates Law Office.

The lawyer said businesses under the dominant group should be closely watched by price management authorities, and any unreasonable price adjustment from them should be timely handled.

“It’s abnormal for the three mobile operators to increase their 3G fees by the same amount and at the same time,” he said, while urging the competition watchdog to look into the case.

Businesses dominating the market are banned from reaching mutual agreement to set a new price level in the market, according to the lawyer.

However, all of the three mobile operators asserted with Tuoi Tre that they did not join hands.

Similarly, Doctor Nguyen Ngoc Son, from the HCMC University of Economics, also said the 3G fee increases should be inspected.

“Even when the price hike is not the result of an agreement among the three, it still hurts subscribers, and the operators should be handled,” he said.

Businesses dominating the market are not allowed to apply unreasonable price adjustment, Son said, citing the competition law.

In case of a price hike, they are only allowed to increase prices by a maximum amount of 5 percent.