Getting ready for the future commercialisation of 5G

April 04, 2022 | 18:00

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Over the past two years, the world has experienced big changes in the way of studying, working, and living with about two billion students studying online, 75 per cent of businesses working from home, and over one billion accessing telehealth services. This has spurred the application of 5G.

Getting ready for the future commercialisation of 5G

Hoang Viet Tien - Head of Strategic Advisory, Insider

Vietnam is considered one of the frontrunners in 5G development alongside the US, China, and Japan, having licensed various trials during 2020-2021. The 5G network was tested by Viettel, VNPT, and MobiFone operators in 16 provinces and cities with half a million subscribers. And in 2021, the 4G network covered 99.8 per cent of the country.

Vietnam plans to license 5G commercialisation in 2022 and expand coverage in urban areas and high-tech industrial zones. This involves increasing the number of digital enterprises from 58,000 to 100,000 by 2025 as part of the National Digital Transformation Plan, aiming to build a digital government and economy, and eventually a digital society.

The ministry has encouraged and instructed telecom enterprises in trialling the technology and services, including Made-in-Vietnam devices. It has also issued specific standards on 5G mobile communication base station equipment and terminal equipment, as well as on the quality of internet access services on 5G terrestrial mobile networks, among others.

On the side of businesses, to reach the potential benefits of 5G, enterprises need to plan for the timely availability of spectrum for mobile services, which is critical to meeting coverage and coverage requirements of the network capacity.

Viettel has successfully researched and tested a complete 5G cluster including a core network, transmission network, macro radio network, and more. This is a big step forward for domestic carriers, knowing that with 2G and 3G, most of the technologies used are provided by foreign enterprises.

At present, the rate of 5G subscribers is still very small. It is estimated that the country has about 70 million mobile broadband subscribers over 3G-5G. In which, 4G subscribers account for 89.42 per cent, followed by 3G subscribers at 10.05 per cent and 5G subscribers at 0.54 per cent.

5G infrastructure needs to be better utilised by businesses and markets. According to research of London-based GSMA, which represents the interests of mobile network operators worldwide, by 2030, 5G is expected to generate $960 billion in global GDP. Also, according to a study by the Institute of Information and Communication Strategy, the contribution of 5G mobile networks to Vietnam’s GDP growth is forecast to reach 7.34 per cent by 2025.

The 5G service with the advantages of transmitting large amounts of data, outstandingly high speed, and very low latency helps mobile networks increase data transmission speed and improve bandwidth compared to 4G technology. However, 5G technology is said to be suitable to support devices that can operate automatically or can be connected to each other, such as smart homes, self-driving vehicles, precision agricultural systems, machinery, industrial and advanced robotics, and more.

When commercialising 5G, businesses need to take advantage of developing appropriate products and services to increase business efficiency. One of the biggest pluses of the network is its extremely low processing latency, bringing data transmission speeds faster than the blink of an eye. Low latency will be the key to unlocking the era of robotics, self-driving cars, immersive and mixed AR, VR, and more besides.

With 5G commercialisation, more applications will be available for industries and sectors. For instance, the application of related infrastructure in urban areas and smart cities is the ability to recognise and regulate traffic; the driver is guided to enter the open road or to the available parking spaces, and at the same time helps reduce emissions. These benefits will be accelerated as 5G becomes more available. With the smart home model, the housing market is taking important steps to become smarter.

With more and more homes now using connected devices, centralised servers that process the data collected from these devices increase processing latency and privacy risks. However, 5G networks can address those challenges by allowing mobile or other devices to process data on the periphery of the home network instead of the cloud, which will enhance privacy and security while reducing latency.

The application of 5G infrastructure will also change the gaming industry. Super-fast wireless speeds and better technological support will help 5G change the way people play games and interact with computers today.

5G can make interactive entertainment more popular, regardless of users’ devices, and support the development of current cloud gaming technology while allowing players to entertain without having to download anything. Elsewhere, Facebook’s Oculus and Microsoft’s game programming division are experimenting with creating a larger virtual world thanks to VR technology, in full detail.

Photo: Shutterstock

Dean Samuels - Chief technologist in ASEAN, Amazon Web Services

We see that cloud services in general will benefit almost every organisation across every single industry and sector. The rapid digital transformation happening across organisations across every sector and industry. Over the last 24 months, we have seen digital transformation happening at a rapid pace with customers who may have had a five-year plan around digital transformation. And now that’s been condensed or compressed over the last two years.

In terms of having deployment of new local zone cloud infrastructure in Hanoi, we think it’s going to increase the opportunity for the cloud in general, where customers who previously may have not felt comfortable for certain reasons, maybe they have their own governance or policies around using providers outside of Vietnam.

We believe it is going to be an opportunity to grow the cloud market overall, in Vietnam, and that’s why you are seeing significant investment from multiple cloud providers in Vietnam. We see an opportunity to significantly grow that market across startups, smaller enterprises, and the government as well.

We chose Hanoi for the deployment because we are feedback-driven, and so we’ve been working very closely with customers in Vietnam to really identify what their requirements are, and most of them want a facility in Hanoi because a lot of the customers are based there. But in the future, you could potentially see additional local zones being made available in Vietnam.

Dang Tuyet Dung - Country manager for Vietnam and Laos, Visa

Visa has made an enormous commitment to support more than 50 million small and medium-sized businesses globally in their digital transformation journey. Therefore, the investment and creative journey to launch a comprehensive digital payment system is our top priority.

In the Vietnamese market, we are introducing a new solution, Tap to Phone, which is a no additional hardware solution to enable smartphones or tablets to accept contactless card-present payments and become a point of sales terminal. A number of banks and fintech companies have become Visa partners to deploy this technology in Vietnam.

Visa Rapid Seller Onboarding is the second solution attached to Tap to Phone that helps reduce the time needed for businesses to become Tap to Phone-approved. With Tap to Phone, business owners can register online to become a merchant and transform smartphones and tablets into cost-effective point-of-sale terminals capable of accepting contactless payments based on the declared information of the business.

A Visa study found that 90 per cent of businesses share that engaging in e-commerce has helped them overcome the difficulties caused by the pandemic and open up new opportunities. Nearly three-quarters of small- and medium-sized groups participating in this study also said that efforts to accept digital payments will drive their strong growth in 2022. And nearly 60 per cent of enterprises said that in the next two years, they will probably invest and focus on using digital payment forms for business development to digitise their business models.

Nguyen Dang Hung - Deputy general director, NAPAS

Digital transformation is an inevitable choice for all businesses. This process is simpler and more convenient for large enterprises with abundant financial potential. For small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), the application of digital technologies costs a lot, along with the requirement of solid human resources in technology and a sense of digital transformation.

However, these obstacles do not have to be a dead-end, and even be advantageous because the number of SMEs accounts for 98 per cent of the total number in Vietnam and they play a huge role in the economy. Therefore, digital transformation businesses will also have to find ways to come up with solutions to serve the majority. With such a large number of customers, the cost will be lower.

Another change comes from the government. Three years ago, we heard about the concept of e-government, but now the government has mentioned the concept of digital government, which will digitalise the entire delivery of public services.

The government has launched policies to support smaller businesses. VietFintech Club, through the Vietnam Banks’ Association and with the support of the State Bank of Vietnam and various ministries, is also encouraging fintech companies to innovate and offer the cheapest and most tailor-made solutions to support businesses.

David Wei - CEO, Huawei Vietnam

Digital transformation is a global phenomenon. Asia is obviously embracing it faster. Vietnam has issued a number of bold policies and new action plans to accelerate digital transformation.

New technologies are driving digital transformation in the country. 5G, cloud and AI technologies are helping local enterprises rethink their businesses, re-evaluate their value chains, and change the way they communicate with their customers.

Leveraging its wealth of knowledge and experience in AI, 5G, and cloud and combining it with real practical industrial applications, Huawei can provide multiple technical collaboration solutions for customer service scenarios.

Based on best practices and joint innovation, Huawei has already developed a wide range of customer applications and has worked with hundreds of Fortune 500 enterprises in over 700 cities in order to help them meet their digital transformation goals and achieve real efficiency improvements, improve their new ICT professionalism, and build true scenario-based solutions.

Huawei has been continuing its long-term and continuous investment strategy in research, innovation and technology activities, while maintaining normal production and business activities in Vietnam, and working closely with carriers and partners to maintain stable network operations, promote digital transformation and support epidemic containment efforts, and reopen local economies.

We will continue to bring to the Vietnamese market fresh, advanced, and greener ICT solutions and technologies that are safe for telecommunications operators, corporate customers, and also consumers.

Huawei wishes to participate and actively contribute to Vietnam’s digital transformation moving forward.

Huawei Vietnam will provide advanced solutions and best services to support its customers and partners, the government, and digital transformation industries; provide end-to-end solutions for carriers; and provide digital transformation solutions such as transportation, finance, and energy, helping Vietnam solve the problem of resource shortages.

By Hoang Viet Tien

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