Military-owned telecoms company Viettel has revealed that it plans to become Vietnam’s third 3G W-CDMA provider in March. The director of Viettel’s HCMC branch, Tran Minh Huy, told local newspaper Vietnam Daily that next generation services will be launched commercially once trials in more than 20 provinces have been concluded. The cellco says it will deploy 100,000 3G base stations during 2010. According to TeleGeography’s GlobalComms Database, rival mobile operators Vinaphone and Mobifone launched W-CDMA-based services in October 2009 and December 2009 respectively, but initial take-up has been slow due to high handset costs.