The total revenue of the entire Information and Communications (IC) sector reached over VND1.3 quadrillion (over US $43 billion) in the first six months of 2019, a year-on-year increase of 7%.
According to a press release, this was announced at a conference held by the Ministry of Information and Communications (MIC) in Hanoi to review its performance in the first six months and devise tasks for the remaining half of this year.
The information and communications technology industry largely contributed to the revenue.
The sector contributed nearly VND 50,000 billion (over US $2.1 billion) to the State budget, up 4% over the same period last year.
In the postal field, the sector had a revenue of VND 13.56 trillion (over US$582 million), equalling 128.32% compared to the same period last year.
Meanwhile, the telecommunications industry’s total revenue was VND 198 trillion (US $8.5 billion) in the first half, equalling 104.38% compared to the first six months of 2018.
Regarding the policies for the ICT industry, the Ministry has submitted the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on the cooperation in the fourth industrial revolution between the Vietnamese government and the World Economic Forum. It has also developed a project to promote the creation of digital content ecosystems in Vietnam and a project for the Vietnam 4.0 industrial revolution centre.
In the communications field, there are now 844 printed newspapers and magazines. Also, 24 independent online newspapers and magazines nationwide. The Ministry issued 23,042 journalists’ cards by the end of June, this year.
At the conference, the Minister of Information and Communications, Nguyen Manh Hung, asked the agencies and enterprises in the sector to continue to follow the general orientations for the whole year to help implement the tasks for the remaining six months.
The government is cracking down on organisations that do not follow its IT standards and regulations. Recently, the Ministry penalised four network service providers for violating the management of subscribers’ information. More than 1.85 million prepaid mobile subscribers were deactivated in the first six months of the year as they were improperly registered.
The government issued documents to rectify the network providers on the purchase of unregistered or improperly registered SIMs, which pose risks of social disorder and instability. Accordingly, they are ordered to end services with any subscribers without credible identities.
By the end of June, Vietnam had 134.5 million 3G and 4G users, up 9.3% from the same time last year.
As reported earlier, Vietnam has become one of the first countries to successfully pilot the 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.
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.
5G technology is capable of providing connection bandwidth 50 times as higher as the combined rate of 2G, 3G, and 4G, with hyper speed and extremely low latency, almost as if in real-time.
The security with this technology was also implemented well during the design phase, so it will be much safer than technologies of previous generations.
