As public WIFI spreads across Vietnam’s streets, cities and transportation networks, plans are in the works to upgrade the country’s mobile internet to 4G LTE status.

According to Thanh Nien, the Vietnamese government plans to give permission to the country’s wireless carriers to launch 4G LTE, “the world’s latest and fastest mobile technology at the moment,” by late 2015 or early 2016.

At a conference in Hanoi last Friday, Doan Quang Hoan, chief of the government’s department of radio frequencies, said that the 2.3GHz and 2.6GHz bands have been dedicated to the new service and that the rights to use them will be determined through a bidding process.

Whether or not Vietnamese telecommunication companies will jump on the 4G LTE bandwagon is another question.

Last August, a senior executive of the Vietnam Post and Telecommunication Group (VNPT) highlighted high costs and an unsaturated 3G market as potential roadblocks for 4G implementation:

“Developing 4G would be not too costly. However, VNPT has not geared up to implement the 4G technology development project because the demand for 4G is still not strong enough”adding that,“3G technology is still more than enough to satisfy the domestic users’ demand for mobile data.”

A 2014 report from the Ministry of Information and Communication found that only 25% of Vietnamese currently use 3G services, pointing to a lack of saturation in the market:

“The 3G market still has a lot of potential, while the demand for 4G is not big enough. That is why telcos still gather their strength in 3G services,” one expert noted.

Wireless carriers may instead invest in upgrading their 3G networks - VinaPhone announced last year that it has succeeded in increasing their 3G data download speed up to 42 Mbps, six times higher than the previous speed - instead of doling out funds on 4G infrastructure. 

[Photo via Kārlis Dambrāns]