The international unit of Vietnam’s leading telecom firm, VNPT, inaugurated Friday its representative office in Laos, the third Southeast Asian market it has entered this year.

The Laos office of VNPT International is located in the capital city of Vientiane, according to the Vietnam News Agency.

The inauguration ceremony was attended by Lao Minister of Posts and Telecommunications Hiem Phomachanh, Vietnamese Deputy Minister of Information and Communications Truong Minh Tuan, and Vietnamese Ambassador to Laos Nguyen Manh Hung.

“We believe the representative office in Laos will help send our cooperation with Lao partners and customers to a new level,” deputy director of VNPT International Ho Cong Lam said at the event.

The office also reaffirms VNPT International’s commitment to supply international telecom services to Laos.

VNPT International also signed cooperation agreements with Lao partners such as Sky Telecom and Planet ISP during the ceremony.

On September 24, VNPT International opened its Myanmar representative office in the former capital city of Yangon, and signed memoranda of understanding on business cooperation and investment with several local businesses including A1 Construction Co. Ltd., Terabit Wave, Elite Telecom Public Company Limited and Fortune International.

On March 14, the company marked a milestone in its penetration into the Cambodian market by debuting a representative office in Phnom Penh.

VNPT, fully known as the Vietnam Posts and Telecommunications Group, said in separate posts on its website that there are huge opportunities for it to get a foothold in the three markets.

The firm deems Myanmar “a potential and lucrative telecom market” as the government is hoping to increase the number of Myanmarese mobile phone users to 75-80 percent of the population between 2015 and 2016.

As of the end of 2012, only 5.4 million out of 60 million, or nine percent of the Myanmar population, used mobile phones, according to VNPT.

VNPT has also targeted to account for 25 percent of the Internet market share in Cambodia by the end of this year, and increase the dominance to 50 percent in 2015.

The company also plans to enter the Thai market in the future.

State-owned VNPT's 2014 revenue is expected to increase six percent from a year earlier, the Vietnam Economic Times newspaper reported, citing figures presented in a telecom ministry meeting.

The group is Vietnam's biggest telecommunications company and ranks among the country's 10 largest enterprises based on several criteria including revenues.

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