According to a press release, the Vietnam Posts and Telecommunications Group (VNPT)’s branch in Ho Chi Minh (HCM) City has proposed to pilot 5G technology from September 2019 to May 2020.
In a document sent to the Municipal People’s Committee, the Department of Information and Communications said the VNPT HCM City will complete the installation of equipment in August.
After the Ministry of Information and Communications allowed the VNPT to test 5G in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, the VNPT HCM City proposed to test the technology in three locations in District 1.
Earlier, the Municipal Committee issued a plan to survey and choose locations for 5G technology piloting.
Accordingly, the Viettel Military Industry and Telecoms Group (Viettel) will carry out the technology in District 10, while the areas for MobiFone Telecommunications Corporation are in District 1 and District 7.
The network providers should complete infrastructure before 31 August.
The pilot programme aims to evaluate 5G coverage, network capacity, frequency, bandwidth, and quality like uploading and downloading speeds, data transmission latency, and standards on service establishment, and maintenance. The measurement will last from September-October 2019.
The municipal department asked competent corporations who pilot the 5G technology to have rational measures to ensure the safety of both humans and equipment.
OpenGov reported earlier that even though Vietnam launched 2G, 3G, and 4G technologies later than many other countries, with the first 5G call in early May, Vietnam has become one of the world’s first countries to successfully pilot 5G mobile network.
The results of the implementation of the first official connection on Viettel’s 5G network showed that the actual data transfer rate reached 1.5-1.7 gigabyte per second (Gb/s), far exceeding the theoretical speed limit of the 4G LTE network, and equivalent to the speed of the commercial cable network at present. This is an important premise towards the commercialisation of the technology in 2020, in line with the plan set by the Ministry of Information and Communications(MIC).
In 2019, the group will continue to expand the testing of the 5G mobile network in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City to get input information in service of MIC’s comprehensive assessment of the 5G technology, based on the criteria: coverage, capacity, maximum speed, and compatibility between 5G devices and the current infrastructure.
The group plans to commercialise the 5G technology in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City by 2020, initially providing enhanced Mobile Broadband (eMBB) services, and then expand the coverage scale to the whole country in the following years.
5G is not just an upgraded version from old technologies but is a revolution for connection services. Therefore, the implementation strategy of this new technology will not be similar to that for 4G previously (simultaneously implemented nationwide). Instead, it will first prioritise the areas with high usage or the locations in need of replacing the cable network.
