Viettel claims Vietnam’s first commercial 5G service

By Juan Pedro Tomás October 17, 2024

Collected at: https://www.rcrwireless.com/20241017/5g/viettel-claims-vietnam-first-commercial-5g-service

Viettel said it has installed more than 6,500 base stations to provide 5G services to all 63 localities in Vietnam

Vietnamese telco Viettel Military Industry and Telecoms Group (Viettel) launched what it claims to be Vietnam’s first commercial 5G service.

Viettel said it has installed over 6,500 base stations to provide 5G services to all 63 localities in Vietnam, focusing in particular on tourism sites, seaports, airports, industrial parks, hospitals and schools.

The telco noted that the new 5G service can offer connection speeds of up to 1 Gbps, with nearly zero ping. Viettel is deploying the 5G service using both Standalone (SA) and Non-Standalone (NSA) architectures.

For individual customers, the service provider is offering 11 prepaid and eight postpaid packages.

For business customers, Viettel said its new 5G network will provide a total of 130 use case options for industrial production, smart city, logistics-transport, agriculture, healthcare, education and energy sectors, integrated with cloud, artificial intelligence (AI) and Internet of Things (IoT) technologies.

Founded in 2004, Viettel had initially launched its 3G offering in 2010 and 4G service in 2017.

Rival operators VinaPhone and MobiFone have also announced their 5G plans recently. VinaPhone started offering trial use of 5G services in certain areas while MobiFone aims to begin trial use of 5G technology during October.

The Ministry of Information and Communications had previously highlighted that domestic operators have been testing 5G services for several years and would be ready to provide commercial services in 2024.

Earlier this month, Viettel has awarded the majority of its nationwide 5G radio access network (RAN) deployment to Swedish vendor Ericsson.

Ericsson said its 5G products and services will be deployed across the majority of provinces in Vietnam under the new contract.

Ericsson’s 5G deployment will include the capital Hanoi and the north and central parts of Vietnam when complete. The extended partnership will also include the modernization of Viettel’s 4G network across the same geographical areas.

Both companies have also signed a separate deal under which they will collaborate towards developing innovative 5G use cases as well as creating a robust developer ecosystem in Vietnam.

Ericsson and Viettel will focus on key areas such as 5G network slicing to provide differentiated connectivity, developer enablement via network APIs and knowledge exchange on emerging technologies.

Finnish vendor Nokia recently announced that it has signed a new commercial deal with Viettel Group to deploy 5G equipment across Vietnam.

The 5G project will cover 22 provinces across the country and support Viettel’s strategy of advancing 5G infrastructure and digital transformation, Nokia said.

The contract stipulates that Nokia will supply equipment from its 5G AirScale portfolio for the first time in Vietnam. This includes Nokia’s next-generation AirScale baseband solutions, Massive MIMO radios, and remote radio head products.

In August, Viettel said it has successfully tested a 5G Standalone (5G SA) network, becoming the first domestic operator in Vietnam to do so after receiving a 5G frequency license from the Ministry of Information and Communications.