LTE a bridge too far for Vietnam

The Ministry of Information and Communications (MIC) has just granted licences for  trialing Long Term Evolution (LTE) TTD technology to operators VNPT Group, Viettel, FPT Telecom, CMC and VTC, at a spectrum of 2.5-2.69GHz.  

However, Pham Hong Hai, director of MIC’s Telecom Department, said the ministry may not issue frequency schemes on the technology nor grant licences for official technology enrollment in Vietnam before 2012.

“Operators may extend their trial licences to an additional year to measure the mature opportunities of the technology in Vietnam,” said Hai. 

The consideration in delaying frequency scheming and official licencing stemmed from the fact that the LTE TDD is still new to the world and it is only deployed in developed nations.

The LTE TDD stands for long-term evolution time division duplex technology, which does not require paired spectrums, facilitating operators to get a spectrum to deploy the network.

The hardware cost is lower, as no diplexer is needed to isolate the transmitter and receiver and base stations to be synchronised with respect to the uplink and downlink transmission times.

The technology is regarded as 3.9G, while the Advanced LTE is true 4G technology with a capacity of 100Mbps.

It is estimated that there might be dozens of operators in developed countries launching the services based on this technology next year after being enrolled in 3G for at least five years.

“LTE TDD is still a new technology, the cost for enrollment and handset devices is still high. Customers do not have many choices in using these services. Meanwhile, Vietnam’s operators are still at the early stage of enrollment in 3G services and need to invest resources to develop networks and run 3G businesses,” said Hai.

The first five trial licences are among the first five proposals from local operators asking for 4G licences on either LTE TDD or Wimax after eight operators completed Wimax trials last year. The eight operators are VNPT, EVN Telecom, FPT Telecom, Vishipel, Viettel, VTC, GTel and Saigon Postel.

Among the eight operators, three of them received 3G licences for their mobile networks and wished the delay in licencing as they have just launched 3G services requiring a large amount of investment capital. The trial basis was often conducted in commercial hubs such as Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, Binh Duong province, Haiphong and Danang.

Dong Duong Telecom, or Indochina Telecom, is thought to have received a licence for promoting mobile broadband networks based on LTE TDD at 2.5Ghz this year.

“Most operators asked for piloting LTE TDD  because it would be easier to share a limited spectrum, lower frequency is dedicated for 3G deployment,” said a Vietnam Multimedia Corporation-VTC official.

“We are not concerned about end-user handsets, as they are available from Malaysia companies with low prices. We have asked the MIC to limit the licences to promote business and fair competition in a limited spectrum,” he added.