VietNamNet Bridge – While 4G LTE has become more and more popular in the world and 4G licenses have been licensed in other regional countries, Vietnam still decides that it’s now not the right time to begin the 4G era.

“This is a thorny problem which requires us to consider a lot of different factors to solve it. This is not only the technology story,” said Le Nam Thang, Deputy Minister of Information and Communication, when asked about the time for Vietnam to begin providing 4G services.

About 30 countries in the world have had the 4G service providers so far. Developed countries like the US and European countries have been using 4G services for the last two years. The neighboring countries such as Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines have pushed up the application of 4G technology.

China, the country with the highest population, last week granted the licenses to deploy 4G to three big mobile network operators.

A report of ABI Research showed that 63 percent of the network operators in Asia have been providing 4G LTE services or have plans to provide 4G services.

The Decision No. 32 of the Prime Minister on the reprogramming the telecom market said that Vietnam would consider the 4G application after 2015. The Ministry of Information and Communication (MIC) has many times affirmed that no 4G license will be granted prior to 2015.

However, MIC still has been repeatedly questioned when 4G technology is available in Vietnam and why Vietnam will only consider licensing 4G services after 2015, or many years later than other countries.

A senior executive of the military telco Viettel said it would be better for Vietnam to begin applying a new technology once the technology is used by 10 percent of people in the world.

The principle was followed by Vietnam when deciding to put 3G into exploitation in 2009, or nine years later than the world.

The senior executive said that to date, 4G technology has been used by only 2 percent of people in the world. Though a lot of countries and a lot of technology firms have been providing 4G services, the number of users remains modest. This has been attributed to the high investment rates and the expensive terminal devices.

Also according to the executive, in the Vietnamese conditions, the time reasonable for Vietnam to begin deploying 4G would come when people can buy the terminal devices for 4G technology at $60-70. Therefore, he believes that it is now not the right time for telcos to start 4G LTE technology.

Other telcos, after analyzing the market demand, technology, trade conditions and resources, have also come to a conclusion that deploying 4G should not be the thing they should focus on at this moment.

The representative of MobiFone, one of the three biggest mobile network operators, said he does not think the high prices of terminal devices would be an obstacle for the 4G technology deployment, because a lot of LTE supporting devices have been available on the market.

The biggest hindrance, according to MobiFone, is the low demand for the services that need LTE technology. Watching TV and online video proves to be the most popular application. However the demand for the services remains low. This means that in the immediate time, Vietnam still does not need 4G which can provide services at higher speed.

Le Van