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New regulations will help promote development of Vietnam's digital infrastructure (photo: M.H)

With 7 chapters and 86 articles, Decree 163 applies to Vietnamese organizations and individuals, and foreign organizations and individuals who directly participate in or relate to telecommunications activities in Vietnam.

Deputy director of the Authority of Telecommunications (AOT) Nguyen Phong Nha said at a workshop on 5G commercialization in smart industry, held on December 26, that Decree 163 will promote the development of the telecom market, develop new services and new business models, promote competition, manage the development of telecommunications infrastructure along with the technical infrastructure of other business fields, and contribute to the development of digital infrastructure in Vietnam.

The regulation on licensing in the telecommunications sector is one of the new points shown in the new decree.

Regarding telecom service classification, the decree cites new services to align with the 2023 Law on Telecommunications and technology development.

Telecom services include transmission services for radio and television; transmission services for machine-to-machine connections, and services for leasing entire or parts of telecommunications networks.

The government has assigned the Ministry of Information and Communications (MIC) to promulgate the list of telecom services for different development periods.

Decree 163 also stipulates: the conditions for licenses for provision of services with network infrastructure; procedures for granting, amending, supplementing, extending, and re-granting telecommunications licenses and forms for organizations and enterprises’ easy implementation; and the cases with 1-year extension applied to licenses with maximum-term operation.

The decree also sets regulations for the list of telecommunications services using the forms of registration and notification; and the conditions for providing telecommunications service under the mode of registration and registration procedures with the spirit of simplification, thus creating favorable conditions for enterprises to join the market.

Also regarding licensing, the decree stipulates requirements that foreign institutions providing telecom services across borders to users in Vietnamese territory and telecom companies which are members of trade agreements have to satisfy in order to ensure national security and defence.

As for regulations on telecom infrastructure management, the decree details the content of passive telecommunications infrastructure planning; and the process of preparing, appraising, approving, announcing, providing information, implementing, evaluating and adjusting this planning.

Regarding the undergrounding and refurbishing of telecommunication cables, the new decree stipulates that Provincial People's Committees approve plans and organize the implementation of the plans on undergrounding and refurbishing telecommunication cables in their localities.

Telecom carriers are responsible for implementing the undergrounding according to an approved plan based on the principle of ensuring maximum sharing in using technical infrastructure, in accordance with technical standards on telecommunications and construction.

Telecom carriers must take responsibility in ensuring the safety of telecom infrastructure and ensuring network information security in telecommunications activities.

Decree 163 stipulates the authority to solve problems on sharing passive telecommunications infrastructure if telecommunications enterprises cannot reach an agreement (except for prices).

Telecom carriers are encouraged to share telecom infrastructure items to save telecommunications network deployment costs. The sharing must be in line with the laws on competition and radio frequency.

The other new provisions of the new decree include the management of mobile subscribers’ information, telecom market and three new services, including data centers, cloud computing and telecom OTT.

Notably, the new Decree stipulates the rights and obligations of foreign organizations providing three new services according to the principle of “light management”.

Explaining the ‘light management’, AOT said data center service providers just have to conduct a registration, while cloud computing and telecom OTT service providers just have to notify their services.

Wholly foreign owned enterprises are allowed to provide data center and cloud computing services. The provision aims at attracting more investment and promoting the development of data centers and cloud computing services in Vietnam.

The providers of the three services are not required to pay rights fees and are not required to make contributions to the fund for popularizing telecom services.

Trong Dat