Vietnam - Telecoms, Mobile and Broadband - Statistics and Analyses

Vietnam keeps pace with the world leaders on 5G trials

As a communist state and a centrally planned economy Vietnam has undergone significant structural change over the years. The government has progressively introduced some competition into the market place, building what it describes as ‘a socialist oriented market economy’.

After peaking in 2009 the fixed line market in Vietnam has seen a significant decline. This trend is predicted to continue over the next five years to 2023.

Fixed broadband penetration in Vietnam remains low mainly due to a limited number of fixed lines and the dominance of the mobile platform. However, the market has grown strongly over the past five years driven by the FTTH market.

The fixed broadband access has been built on the back of an extensive Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) network, with the more recent focus being on fibre-based services. Subscriber growth in fibre continues to be strong.

Data sovereignty is a key driver for local data centres. Indonesia, Vietnam and China are among the Asian countries tightening requirements to store citizen and consumer data locally for the purpose of data protection.

Growth has been flat in Vietnam’s mobile market over the past five years. Market growth has been restrained due to a mature and saturated market. Mobile subscriber growth is also expected to be relatively low over the next five years to 2023.

In 2019 the first MVNO in Vietnam, Indochina Telecom Company (Itelecom) was launched.

Vietnam’s mobile infrastructure has a proven track record of keeping pace with more developed countries such as South Korea and Hong Kong.

Vietnam is well on the path towards rolling out 5G services. Vietnam has begun to award 5G test licences to the nation’s mobile operators with a view to launching commercial networks in 2020.

Ho Chi Minh City is set to become the first smart city in Vietnam, focusing on cloud computing infrastructure, big data, building data warehouses / data centres and security-monitoring centres, and developing an open data ecosystem to achieve its 2020 goal.

Fixed broadband penetration in Vietnam remains low mainly due to a limited number of fixed lines and the dominance of the mobile platform. However, the market has grown strongly over the past five years driven by the FTTH market. Over the next five years to 2023 strong growth is expected to continue to be driven by rising fixed line penetration, in particular the rollout of fibre access.

Key developments:

• Vietnam intends to launch 5G services by 2020.
• The fixed line market in Vietnam has seen a significant decline over the past few years.
• VNPT-Vinaphone completed the conversion of its fixed network from copper to fibre-optic access.
• Fibre-based broadband (FttH) subscribers have been growing rapidly.
• Over the next five years to 2023 strong growth is expected to continue in the fixed broadband market.
• Vietnam has seen a very rapid increase in mobile broadband penetration over the past five years.

Companies mentioned in this report:

VNPT; Vinaphone; Mobifone; Viettel; S-Fone; EVN Telecom; Vietnamobile, GMobile, FPT Telecom; VTC; GTel

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