Managers of the Chinese telecom group recently held meetings with the leaders of the Committee for State Capital Management, or super committee in Vietnam, expressing their willingness to cooperate with Vietnam in digital transformation, digital economy development, and 5G deployment.

Huawei's senior executives meet officials of the Committee for State Capital Management

According to Truong Van Tu, former head of the Economic Information Technology, 5G technology development and digital transformation will help Vietnam’s enterprises compete with the world. Vietnam’s enterprises need to choose the way to carry out digital transformation most quickly and at the lowest cost.

Tu believes that it would be helpful if Huawei cooperates with Vietnamese enterprises. The Chinese telecom group can start by cooperating with some large universities, including Hanoi Economics University and HCM City Economics University, because the schools will ‘pump’ technology into economic groups.

Managers of the Chinese telecom group recently held meetings with the leaders of the Committee for State Capital Management, or super committee in Vietnam, expressing their willingness to cooperate with Vietnam in digital transformation, digital economy development, and 5G deployment.

However, he understands the cautiousness of Vietnam network operators when working with Huawei.

Vietnam’s telcos plan to commercialize 5G by the end of 2020. All the three big network operators, namely Viettel, VinaPhone-VNPT and MobiFone, have announced plans to cooperate with foreign partners for 5G development. However, Huawei has not been mentioned.

“We will use the best,” he said.

Commenting about the concern that Vietnam will rely on foreign partners in equipment, technology and operating platforms, he said the reliance is unavoidable as Vietnam’s technology is not good enough.

“If we don’t rely on Huawei, we will rely on Cisco or other foreign companies. Once utilizing technologies, we will rely on the units that invent the technologies,” he said. “The thing to discuss here is how heavily we rely on them."

Meanwhile, Nguyen Van Vy, former head of the Software Technology Division of the IT Faculty, the Hanoi University of Technology, said the super-committee can cooperate with Huawei in digital transformation, but needs to be very cautious.

He thinks that it would be better not to cooperate with the Chinese telecom group in 5G deployment.

Chinese equipment is very cheap and competitive in price. However, he said, it is necessary to consider information security carefully.

Vietnam needs to learn lessons from the projects implemented by Chinese enterprises in Vietnam. China has built many power plants in Vietnam, but the plants use outdated technology which consumes a lot of coal and causes pollution.

“Vietnam should buy major equipment from developed countries such as the US and West European countries,” Vy said, adding that European countries arecautious when using Chinese equipment.

Linh Ha 

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