There are now some 22 million households with TVs nationwide, including 5 million using pay-TV services. About 3.5 million households are using set top boxes based on the older DVB-T standard, while 12.5 million households watch analog TV with antennas.

With the implementation of the TV digitalisation programme, the 3.5 million households using DVB-T set top boxes will have to shift to higher technology devices to be able to receive TV signals in accordance with the DVB-T2 standard.   

The programme is forecast to be mainly completed by 2018. Vietnam then expects to deploy LTE at low frequency bands.

LTE, an abbreviation for Long Term Evolution, commonly marketed as 4G LTE, is a standard for wireless communication of high-speed data for mobile phones and data terminals.

In 2013, there were about 200 million LTE subscribers over the world. The number was raised to 450 million last year.

LTE subscribers are predicted to be up to 830 million by the end of this year.