Telecom giant Viettel launches Vietnam’s first commercial 5G service

Viettel Military Industry and Telecoms Group (Viettel) launched Vietnam’s first commercial 5G service on Tuesday, marking the event as a celebration of its 20th anniversary.

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

The new service’s connection speed can reach 1 Gbps, 10-fold that of 4G, with nearly zero ping. Viettel is deploying the service on both non-stand-alone (NSA) and stand-alone (SA) platforms.

For individual customers, the service provider is offering 11 pre-paid and eight post-paid packages, aiming to support content creators.

For business customers, it is providing 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.

Established in 2004, Viettel launched its 3G service in 2010 and 4G service in 2017. It made the first call for the 5G service with a connection speed of 1.5-1.7 Gbps in May 2019, and another first call with its self-made equipment in January 2020.

VinaPhone and MobiFone, major competitors of Viettel, have also announced their 5G plans recently. VinaPhone started offering trial use of 5G services in some areas in October 13-November 15, while MobiFone aims to begin trial use some time this month.

The Ministry of Information and Communications had said earlier that telecom service providers in Vietnam have been testing 5G services for several years and would be ready to provide commercial services in 2024.