A representative of the Department of Telecommunications talked about the quality of Internet services in Vietnam during the covid pandemic. (Photo: Trong Dat)
Nguyen Phong Nha, Deputy Director of the Department of Telecommunications (Ministry of Information and Communications), from January 2020 to October 2021, said Vietnam's Internet traffic rose by more than 40%. Specifically, Vietnam's total broadband Internet traffic increased from over 4,955 Petabytes in January 2020 to 6,977 Petabytes in October 2021.
In terms of Internet rates, Vietnam has one of the cheapest Internet in the world. It ranked 12th out of 211 countries in terms of cheap fixed broadband Internet rates in 2020.
According to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the fixed Internet unit price/per capita income of Vietnam is low, equal to about 41% of the world average. On average, Vietnam's fixed broadband download/upload speed reached 84.12/74.42 Mbps, ranking 58 out of 181 countries, and was rated at a good level. The world average fixed broadband speed is 116.86/64.73 Mbps.
In Southeast Asia, Vietnam is inferior to Singapore (3/181), Thailand (8/181), Malaysia (46/181) but better than Indonesia, the Philippines, Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar in terms of fixed broadband Internet speed.
Vietnam's average fixed broadband Internet speed growth in the past 12 months reached 50%, increasing from 42.07 Mbps to 64.67 Mbps.
As for mobile broadband, by October 2021, Vietnam had about 71 million mobile broadband subscribers with 89.81% prepaid and 10.19% postpaid.
Like fixed broadband rates, Vietnam is one of the countries with cheap mobile Internet rates.
According to statistics of Cable.co.uk in 155 countries of the average mobile Internet rate for 1GB of data, Vietnam is in the cheapest group, ranked 10th with $0.57/GB. Statistics of the International Telecommunication Union also show that the mobile Internet unit price/per capita income of Vietnam is very low, equivalent to one third of the world average.
According to a survey by Ookla, Vietnam's mobile Internet speed ranks 59 out of 138 countries. In Southeast Asia, Vietnam is ranked higher than the Philippines (67th) and Malaysia (77th) but lower than Thailand (36th) and Singapore (18th) in terms of mobile Internet speed.
Nha said that to improve the quality of fixed broadband Internet, Vietnam needs to upgrade bandwidth, improve modem device capacity, expand domestic and international bandwidth, and modify some standards.
To further improve the speed of mobile Internet, the country must add more bands to the 4G network. In addition, telecommunications businesses need to apply new technologies, expand testing scale and accelerate the commercialization of 5G.
The Ministry of Information and Communications has encouraged the sharing of mobile telecommunications infrastructure and the building of more 4G base stations in key areas such as Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi.
