At the Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2024 – the largest B2B event in the global telecommunications and IT industry – Henry Calvert, Network Director of the GSM World Association, stated: “We are very pleased and thankful to Viettel for being a pioneer and taking the initiative to sign this Memorandum of Understanding (MOU). We truly hope that both parties will have long-term cooperation, not only in 5G but also in 6G, 7G…, with the Open Gateway open connection. We are committed to not only accompanying Viettel in the region but also on a global scale”.
Meanwhile, at the 2023 Viettel Group’s Excellent Individuals and Collectives Ceremony (Viettel’s Stars 2023), Lieutenant General Tao Duc Thang, Chairman–CEO of Viettel Group, emphasized: “This is an endeavor on a challenging path, requiring ambition, perseverance, and determination from each Viettel collective and individual. We must carry out what has never been done in Vietnam, and few places in the world have been able to do”.
The admiration of partners and recognition from the Group’s leadership are dedicated to the cadres and experts who have mastered 5G technology, making Viettel one of six manufacturers (vendors) in the world capable of manufacturing complete 5G network equipment (base transceiver systems, transmission systems, core network systems, etc.) including both hardware and software.
Challenges of the pioneer
The 5G conquest was initiated in 2016 by the “warriors” of the Broadband Telecommunications Center (VTBR) under Viettel High Technology Industries Corporation (VHT) – after mastering the technology and successfully manufacturing 4G network equipment. At that time, 4G technology was “mature”, many partners were willing to share experience and standards, and there were also qualified teams of experts for support. But 5G was a different story.
“Everything was new, even to the partners who had previously cooperated with Viettel. They were still exploring themselves, or demanded very high costs for cooperation in developing new technologies”, shared Mr. Hoang Dinh Hai Truyen, Director of VTBR Center.
Wideband Wireless Equipment Research Center – VHT is one of the ten collectives achieving the title Viettel’s Stars 2023
Mr. Truyen said that 5G at that time was a technology of the future, with only some rough outlines. Unlike traditional telecommunications networks, 5G is a technological leap with ultra-low latency connectivity, ensuring a density of millions of connections per square kilometer, or a super-high speed that is 20 times faster than the current 4G network. The 5G network is a critical digital platform for each nation, providing the foundation for important digital services in industrial environments such as automated factories, self-driving transport, or instant video applications serving medicine, automatic control, simulation, etc. The technical requirements also far exceed those of 2G, 3G, 4G networks, which only ensure connectivity for communication. The volume of related work in terms of processing, integration, etc. increases by hundreds of times.
In order to seize the opportunity as a pioneer, the Group’s leadership always sets the goal of commercializing the product. That is, in addition to meeting customer feature requirements, the product must also meet all the technical standards of the target markets, not only Vietnam but also Europe, the US…, equivalent to products of large technology companies. Along with ensuring technical requirements, it is necessary to keep the price low and ensure competitiveness in the market.
The 5G race around the world has led vendors like Huawei and Ericsson to invest billions of dollars and thousands of personnel in research and development. Viettel does not have those resources, even the number of soldiers participating in the research is only about 150 – much less than the force of 5,000 – 10,000 people in departments with similar functions at other vendors.
Faced with these challenges, Viettel still found its own advantage: Being the pioneering network operator in the world to manufacture equipment, it has a network for testing. On the other hand, the ORAN standard community is currently developing strongly, and some countries even have regulations on the application rate of this open standard in telecommunications, especially in Europe and the US. This is an opportunity for Viettel to enter this market. Viettel’s 5G products are built on the ORAN open standard platform, which can be deployed in parts on other network systems in the world.
Aspirations guide actions
With only a narrow door for a big problem, Viettel was bound to win. The Director of the VTBR Center said that Viettel had no choice but to do more, faster in its own way. Global companies only choose one platform for development, but Viettel chose all three of the world’s largest platforms for development at the same time: Qualcomm, Intel, and AMD.
The human resources were small in number, but they were a team of warriors full of passion. “In the 5G project, what I am most satisfied with is the people, the brothers in the project. I personally always determine that this is the project’s greatest asset” – said Mr. Truyen. Most of the engineering team is very young, ready to engage in the work, and full of desire to fight for a meaningful cause.
In that 5G race, the brothers have fiery motivations to complete the product: That is the aspiration to master high technology, to do major projects, and to contribute to the nation, so everyone strives. The brothers all agree that each person must try their best to do better today than yesterday to build the project, to contribute to the organization, to the country, to prove themselves, and to bring high-tech products to the world level.
Vietnamese intelligence goes global
Currently, Viettel is able to stand shoulder to shoulder with five other developers, including Ericsson, Huawei, Samsung, ZTE, and Nokia, becoming a pioneer in the field of providing 5G equipment.
Most recently, at the Mobile World Congress on February 26, 2024, Viettel signed a Memorandum of Understanding on the deployment of an Application Programming Interface (API) service following the Open Gateway initiative of the Global System for Mobile Communications Association – GSMA Open Gateway. This initiative is global in scale, launched since 2023 with the participation of major mobile network operators in the world, and Viettel is now the first Vietnamese network operator to participate.
Also at MWC 2024, Viettel and Intel signed a cooperation agreement to accelerate the research, development, and production of advanced technology serving future digital infrastructure and digital society. As per Dan Rodriguez, Vice President and General Manager of Intel’s Network Platform Group, “Viettel and Intel will develop concepts, conduct field trials, and deploy commercial services for product lines and solutions in the fields of artificial intelligence (AI), 5G, smart devices, computing platforms & data centers”.
Nokia and NVIDIA also highly value Viettel’s 5G technology ecosystem with commitments to broader cooperation.
The achievement with 5G once again demonstrates that each project is a challenge for Viettel to overcome, to achieve unlimited excellence.
