SIM cards issued before August 1 that have not been activated will berecalled by the end of this month in order to ease a numbers crunch,leading mobile phone service providers have said.

They will also recall SIM cards that have been activated but have notgenerated any outgoing calls and messages since August 1.

According to the two leading mobile phone service providers in thecountry, Vinaphone and MobiFone, SIM cards that were issued andallocated to dealers before August 1 will expire in December 30.

"As many as 100,000 SIM cards of our network that have been allocatedto dealers are still unsold" a Vinaphone representative said.

He said the recall announcement has already been sent to its dealers nationwide.

Meanwhile, MobiFone said its network has 200,000 SIM cards that have been issued but not activated.

According to the Vietnam Post and Telecommunications Group (VNPT),which owns both Vinaphone and MobiFone, of its 75.5 million mobile phonesubscribers nationwide, only 46 million generate outgoing calls andmessages.

Furthermore, as many as 5.5 millionsubscribers have been locked by service providers because of unpaidtelecom bills. All these SIM cards will also be recalled later.

New mobile subscriptions in Vietnam have skyrocketed in recent years,reaching 19 million in 2006, 25 million in 2007, 74 million in 2008, 98million in 2009 and 134 million by the end of 2013.

Data from the Vietnam 2013 White Book on information and communicationstechnologies released on September 16 by the Ministry of Informationand Communications showed Viettel commanded a 40.05 percent of Vietnam'smobile subscriptions.

VNPT subsidiaries MobiFoneand Vinaphone ranked second and third with 21.4 percent and 19.88percent. The remaining market share was occupied by Vietnamobile andGMobile with 10.74 percent and 3.93 percent, respectively.-VNA