4G waveband for Vietnam: one man one idea

 European network operators, who have been pioneering in applying 4G technology, incline towards choosing 1800 MHz waveband, while Vietnamese Viettel believes that the 700 MHz waveband would be more suitable to the current conditions of Vietnam.

At the LTE Conference and Exhibition Asia 2011, held recently in Singapore, speakers pointed out that European network operators now incline towards choosing 1800 MHz as the main waveband for their LTE services. The 1800 MHz frequency band has also become popular globally.

The European Union (EU) once allocated 900 MHz and 1800 MHz for GSM technology. However, things have changed, while HSPA and LTE technologies have been allowed to use the frequency bands.

Most of the countries belonging to the EU have accepted the decision. However, due to the differences in the provisions of the laws and the competition environment, it is likely that the implementation of the new technologies may be delayed. The Netherlands and Switzerland, for example, have decided to delay the implementation of the non-GSM technologies until the current 3G licenses expire.

Meanwhile, some speakers from Asia believe that it would be better to wait and only make decision after China and India decide which wavebands they will use. The two markets alone would have some two billion subscribers; therefore, their decisions would deserve to be considered.

At LTE Asia 2011, experts all agreed that it is necessary to reach a common voice about choosing wavebands for LTE technology. In case different countries choose different frequency bands for LTE, the terminal equipments would certainly be more expensive because they need to be designed to fit different bands. Besides, it will be very difficult to implement international roaming if LTE is carried out on too many different wavebands.

A Vietnamese telecom expert said that if 1800 MHz is the Europe’s choice for LTE, this means that the opportunities for the 2G operators to advance to 4G would be relatively big. The biggest advantage of the waveband is that 2G stations would be maintained, which allows making it cheaper to advance to 4G. This would also be the good news for the four Vietnamese network operators, including Viettel, VinaPhone, MobiFone and Beeline which own the 1800 MHz waveband.

Le Van Tuan, a senior official of the Ministry of Information and Communication, said that in case the 1800 MHz is chosen for LTE, there could not be too many operators using the waveband.

The Ministry of Information and Communication has reserved the bands of 2300-2600 MHz for 4G. However, the wavebands have not licensed because the demand for 4G services remain weak. At present, Vietnam is still exploiting the 2G services.

Some Vietnamese telecom companies say that in general, Vietnam bears influences from European technologies rather than the US technologies. However, it remains an unknown for LTE waveband.

Meanwhile, Viettel, a big network operator, does not applaud the viewpoint of “advancing towards 4G with 1800 MHz waveband.” It believes that using the 700 MHz waveband proves to be more reasonable in the conditions of Vietnam.

As planned, Vietnam will stop analog TV broadcasting from 2015 in big cities, which will lead to the redundancy of 700 MHz. Meanwhile, the waveband can be used for broadband mobile services, while it allows to have larger coverage for rural areas and allows to reduce the investment costs.

According to Viettel, it needs about 70 BTS stations to cover 4G LTE in Hanoi if using the 700 MHz band. Meanwhile, it will need up to 130 BTS if the 4G LTE services are carried out on the 2.6 GHz.

As such, low investment costs, good coverage and the readiness of equipment for the waveband, have been cited as the most important factors to persuade the management agency to allocate the 700 MHz for LTE 4G.
Vietnamnet.vn