It was recently announced that Vietnam will work on providing 4G connectivity, running services on a trial system this year -making it officially available in the year 2017.
An official from the Vietnam Ministry of Information and Communication (MIC) recently stated that, “Vietnam needs to consider some factors including the conditions and popularity of the technology, to decide how they should go with 4G.”
The country boasts the greatest number of internet users, accounting for 45 million in 2015. Vietnam also has a market of over 136 million mobile subscribers- posing great opportunity for 4G development.
This was announced by Tran Tuan Anh, Ministry of Information and Communications at a conference in Hanoi this past fall. Three cities and provinces will be allowed for each licensed company, during the one-year trial.
4G services are being stalled as the state-owned operators are working to recover investments made in 3G. Private Telecom companies are calling for the plan to implement 4G to be accelerated.
It is believed that the current services provided are hurting Vietnam’s competition in the market. Mai Liem Truc, the former Deputy Telecommunications Minister, had said that this plan for trials in the next year would not be carried out quick enough.
The competition is fierce amongst the telco providers as they are trying to provide the best to customer demanding greater services.
Since the beginning of this year, the leading telcos have already set up base transceiver stations and are providing trials for 4G services to customers.
It is feared that the rush for 4G deployment will result in heavy pricing schemes for the ‘modern’ technology.
Image by Emillio Labrador– CC BY 2.0
