Vietnamese state-owned telco Viettel says it has successfully acquired a block of 700-MHz spectrum for VND1.95 trillion (US$75.2 million) – a band the government has been trying to auction off for the last couple of years – to bolster its 4G and 5G network.
According to state media reports, Viettel won the rights to the B2-B2' block (713-723 MHz and 768-778 MHz) on Tuesday, with the licence valid for the next 15 years. Viettel will use the band to support 4G and 5G services, including IoT use cases such as smart cities, smart agriculture and smart transportation.
In a LinkedIn post on Thursday, Viettel said the band’s greater propagation range would help it not only improve indoor coverage in urban areas, but also expand coverage to rural, mountainous, and remote regions at much lower deployment costs.
Viettel also said the band will enable it to expand coverage to 99% of Vietnam’s population by 2030. Viettel added that it plans to deploy over 20,000 5G base stations in 2025.
The 700-MHz band – which was previously used for analog television – has been available since 2020 after Vietnam officially switched over to digital broadcasting. The Radio Frequency Department (RFD) authorised the use of the 700-MHz band for 4G and 5G in 2023.
However, despite three previous auction attempts by the Ministry of Information and Communications (MIC) – the most recent one in February – the spectrum has gone unsold, as each auction failed to attract enough qualified bidders. Viettel participated in all three previous 700-MHz auctions.
With the B2-B2' block now sold, there are still two other blocks up for grabs: the B1-B1' block (703-713 MHz and 758-768 MHz) and the B3-B3' block (723-733 MHz and 778-788 MHz).
