In 2021, due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, people had to switch to online learning, working and entertainment, and the demand for the Internet also increased, thus creating an opportunity to develop the telecommunications industry, but also posing many challenges for domestic fixed and mobile broadband subscription providers.

Illustrative image (Source: emerging-europe.com)

Therefore, developing telecoms infrastructure and broadband Internet services to better serve the needs of users is a goal of the industry in 2022.

Doan Quang Hoan, General Secretary of the Radio-Electronics Association of Vietnam, said that users almost do not care about how many Mbps the network speed is, but the stability when experiencing registered internet services.

According to statistics of the Department of Telecommunications under the Ministry of Information and Communications, by the end of 2021, Vietnam had 70.9 million mobile broadband subscribers, accounting for 57.23 percent of the total number of mobile subscribers, up 4 percent year-on-year; and 18.79 million fixed broadband subscribers, up 14.59 percent year-on-year.

Although the trend of developing fixed broadband services is inevitable to serve the digital transformation in Vietnam in general as well as the increase in people's demand for Internet use in particular, the pressure on telecommunications revenue is still very high.

The average revenue per unit (ARPU) of fixed broadband subscriptions in 10 months of 2021 was only about 137,000 VND (about 6 USD), down 8 percent compared to 2020 (149,000 VND). Among the nearly 18 million fiber-optic broadband subscribers in Vietnam, up to 83 percent use packages with speeds below 100Mbps, making Vietnam's fiber-optic broadband speed still much lower than that of some countries in the region.

Hoang Duc Dung from the Viettel Network Corporation, an affiliate of the Viettel Group, said that Vietnam is among the markets with the cheapest internet charges in the world, ranking 12th out of the 211 countries and territories in terms of fixed broadband internet charges. In 2021, Internet capacity grew rapidly, but revenue only increased 2 percent per year. This is a great pressure on telecoms service providers, he added.

Minister of Information and Communications Nguyen Manh Hung said that infrastructure must be developed first and fast, and the technologies applied must be modern ones.

Deputy Director of the Telecommunications Authority Nguyen Phong Nha held that to improve broadband internet quality, focus should be placed on upgrading bandwidth and modem devices’ capacity, widening domestic and international bandwidth, and adjusting standards.

Source: VNA