Vietnam aims to launch 5G mobile services in 2020, the Ministry of Information and Communications said on its website.
Vietnam will not be using 5G telecom equipment from China-based Huawei, the largest telecom network supplier.
The government last year awarded its first trial 5G license to Viettel, the country’s largest telecommunication company with more than 60 million subscribers.
Viettel Group, Vietnam’s largest mobile carrier owned by the defence ministry, will deploy Ericsson’s equipment in Hanoi and Nokia’s technology in Ho Chi Minh City, said Viettel CEO Le Dang Dung earlier.
It will use 5G smartphone chipsets from Qualcomm and another US company. The carrier, which uses Ericsson and Nokia for its 4G network, is also developing its own equipment.
In June, Vingroup JSC, Vietnam’s biggest-listed firm by market value, signed a deal with Qualcomm and a unit of Japan’s Fujitsu to produce 5G smartphones in the country.
Vietnam’s smaller telecom carriers appear to be shying away from Huawei, SCMP reports. MobiFone is using Samsung equipment while Vietnam Telecom Services Company, or Vinaphone, entered into a partnership with Nokia to deploy its 5G network, according to local media.
While Viettel dominates the Vietnamese mobile market, other competing mobile carriers, MobiFone and Vinaphone, are expected to launch their own 5G network by 2021. The 5G growth plan of Viettel, MobiFone and Vinaphone, will be depending on the availability of cost-effective smartphones.
According to the Financial Times, South Korean carriers have spent a combined $2.6 billion to develop 5G networks in 2019. Japanese telecoms such as SoftBank, KDDI, among others, have agreed to invest $14 billion to develop 5G nationwide.
