The Ministry of Information and Communications plans to announce the national 5G development strategy in January 2019, meaning that Vietnam’s plan for the fifth-generation cellular communications technology will be in the pipeline just over 2 years after the commercial roll-out of 4G. Is it too early?

According to experts, if one is to say whether the development of 5G is late or early, they need to look at Vietnam’s actual development, the current and future demands and the general global trend. As 5G technologies and standards will soon be established, commercial 5G networks could be widely adopted across the globe in 2020.

Therefore Vietnam needs to consider deploying 5G immediately in order to catch up with the trend and not fall behind because the country was already running late in rolling out 4G in comparison with the other regional countries. Now is indisputably the correct time for Vietnam to begin formulating a 5G development strategy for the future.

With low latency, high bandwidth and fast response, 5G will offer a great deal of potential applications in various sectors, such as the Internet of Things, and smart cities and smart healthcare, in additional to conventional voice and data services. Although Vietnam still has unused 4G capacity, it does not mean 5G adoption is unnecessary because the business model of this technology will be entirely different.

Experts say that Vietnam needs to look at 5G development as an inevitable trend at a higher level so as to provide more development opportunities, especially in harmonising service development in different areas and segments of users.

They also note that 5G development does not mean discarding the existing technologies and infrastructure. Currently many countries are expanding over-the-top and Internet of Things services rapidly and still trying to make use of existing 3G and 4G infrastructure so that they can move forward to 5G in the future. That being so, deploying 5G still needs the support of 3G and 4G platforms.

It is necessary to have a close cooperation between the government and businesses in developing 5G networks. The market must be opened to create opportunities to enter such areas as smart buildings, smart cities and video streaming services.

In Vietnam the evolution to 5G will be different from the transition from 3G to 4G. If the driver for the switch from 3G to 4G was to meet users’ demand to access data services on their smartphones, the adoption of the next-generation of wireless technology will be to create new business models such as digital doctors, self-driving cars or smart buildings.

Therefore, as the fourth industrial revolution is becoming a reality, the preparation for the fifth-generation of wireless technology is never too late for planning the national telecommunications infrastructure, from which an essential foundation will be laid for long-term, fundamental and effective steps for the future of Vietnam’s information technology sector.