Viettel gets one-year 5G trial license

The trial is licensed for a period of one year until January 21 next year. Viettel is the first company in Vietnam to receive this license.

The military-owned company is allowed to trial the sevices in Hanoi and HCMC at not more than 73 locations and without charging for the services.

The company had earmarked $40 million for the development of its own 5G chipset, but was also considering using technology from Ericsson and Nokia, its president and CEO Le Dang Dung told Reuters earlier this month.

Viettel has around 60 million subscribers in Vietnam and over 30 million more in 10 other countries, predominantly in Asia and Africa.

Speaking at a seminar on telecoms innovations at the end of 2018, Minister of Information and Communications Nguyen Manh Hung had expressed plans to introduce 5G by 2020, which would make Vietnam one of the first countries to deploy this technology.

5G is the latest generation in of mobile Internet connectivity, and should offer much faster speeds and more reliable connections on smartphones and other devices compared to the current 3G and 4G technologies.