Vietnam’s 5G Is Expanding Fast. Can Operators Trust the Stack It’s Built On?
As Vietnam builds out 5G on Chinese vendor equipment, operators face real questions about compliance exposure, interoperability constraints, and the cost of switching later
Vietnam’s 5G network is expanding quickly. For operators building industrial operations in the country, the harder question is not whether the network will reach them—it almost certainly will—but whether the infrastructure underneath it can be trusted over time.
As Vietnamese telecom operators roll out 5G using a mix of domestic and Chinese vendors—including Huawei and ZTE—businesses are taking on a structural risk that goes beyond connectivity. Early infrastructure choices are shaping data exposure, compliance posture, and switching costs for years to come. Once systems are built on top of a network stack, changing course later gets expensive and complicated, especially if regulation tightens or vendor compatibility becomes a problem.
For manufacturers, logistics operators, and industrial infrastructure players in Vietnam, this is the question that should be driving infrastructure decisions right now—not rollout speed, not coverage maps, but whether the vendor stack underneath the network is one they can build on without regret.
The Rollout Is Real. Enterprise Uptake Is Not
Vietnam’s 5G rollout is moving fast by any regional standard. According to the Vietnam Telecommunications Authority, the country had installed nearly 40,000 base transceiver stations as of February 2026, covering about 90% of the population and serving close to 23 million subscribers. Independent benchmarks from OpenSignal and GSMA broadly support the pace of expansion, though public estimates of enterprise adoption remain limited.
But enterprise uptake has been slower to follow. Private 5G networks—often positioned as the business payoff of the technology—have yet to take off in a meaningful way. Deployment in specialized settings like seaports and industrial facilities has been particularly slow, with businesses remaining cautious over technical integration challenges and regulatory issues such as spectrum allocation. Citing comments from former deputy minister of post and telecommunications Mai Liem Truc in a January 2026 Vietnamnet Global report, private networks were expected to become a major revenue driver for telco operators, but consumer users still account for most demand.
The Real Risk Is the Vendor Stack
With Vietnam expanding its 5G rollout, vendor choice is becoming the more consequential question. Telco operators Viettel and VNPT have signed 5G equipment deals with Huawei and ZTE, while Mobifone is exploring similar partnerships. Cost is clearly part of the rationale—Reuters reported that Vietnamese officials described Chinese telco equipment as reliable and cost-effective.
But for operators building on top of this infrastructure, the trade-offs go well beyond price. European officials have warned that the involvement of Chinese vendors in Vietnam’s advanced networks could raise questions for foreign investors about data security and the reliability of the underlying infrastructure.
For operators running data-heavy industrial operations, this translates into three specific risks.
Compliance exposure.
Vietnam’s own regulatory environment is tightening. The Personal Data Protection Decree (Decree 13/2023), effective since July 2023, requires cross-border data transfer impact assessments filed with the Ministry of Public Security, and the Law on Personal Data Protection (Law 91/2025) that took effect in January 2026 introduces revenue-based penalties—up to 5% of annual revenue for cross-border transfer violations. Operators whose systems sit on networks built with vendors flagged as high-risk by their trading partners face a compounding problem: Vietnam’s own data rules are getting stricter at the same time that the EU and US are tightening restrictions on Chinese-origin ICT infrastructure. The EU’s 5G Cybersecurity Toolbox has driven several member states to restrict or exclude high-risk vendors from core and sensitive network functions, and the European Commission has signaled it may make these measures binding. In the US, the ICTS supply chain final rule (effective February 2025) gives the Commerce Department broad authority to prohibit transactions involving ICT from foreign adversaries. An operator in Vietnam working with a European automotive OEM or a US logistics partner may find that vendor choices made at the network layer create compliance friction they did not anticipate.
Interoperability constraints.
Integrating with global systems, cloud providers, and cross-border platforms becomes more complex when the underlying network infrastructure is built on vendor-specific architectures. Open RAN—the set of standards designed to enable multi-vendor interoperability—is gaining momentum globally, with operators like AT&T targeting 70% of RAN traffic on open platforms, and initial deployments appearing in Southeast Asia through the Orex SAI–Surge rollout in Indonesia. But Vietnam’s 5G buildout has largely followed the traditional single-vendor model. For operators who need their Vietnamese sites to integrate cleanly with global cloud infrastructure, enterprise platforms, or cross-border data systems, a proprietary network stack can mean additional integration layers, workarounds, and dependencies that compound over time.
Switching costs.
Once operations are built on top of a network stack, moving away from it requires reconfiguring systems, vendors, and workflows across the entire dependent layer. The scale of this problem is not hypothetical. In the US, the FCC’s “rip and replace” program to remove Huawei and ZTE equipment from domestic networks generated reimbursement claims of over $5 billion against an initial appropriation of $1.9 billion—and that was for relatively small carriers, not large-scale industrial operations. For operators in Vietnam who build factory automation, logistics tracking, or port management systems on top of a 5G network stack, the cost of switching later would involve not just the network equipment itself but the entire operational technology layer built above it.
Operator Takeaways
Do Now
Focus on targeted 5G deployments in controlled settings where the use case is already clear—smart factories, seaports, airports, logistics hubs. These are areas where Vietnamese operators are already testing private networks and where value is easier to measure. Where possible, negotiate flexibility into infrastructure decisions: vendor diversification clauses, interoperability requirements, or exit options that reduce long-term lock-in risk. Wait too long, and operators may lose the chance to shape early network partnerships in industrial zones where infrastructure terms are already being set.
Wait
Hold back on scaling private 5G too broadly across sites until integration maturity, enterprise demand, and regulatory clarity improve. Vietnam’s enterprise rollout has been slower than expected, especially outside pilot environments. Push too quickly beyond pilots, and operators risk managing parallel legacy and 5G systems simultaneously—higher costs, engineering teams stretched thin, and uncertain returns on infrastructure that may need to be reworked later.
Avoid
Do not treat fast rollout or early 6G ambition as a signal of full industrial readiness. Operators who over-commit now risk locking into a vendor stack that becomes a liability when compliance requirements tighten, when global partners demand higher standards for data handling and interoperability, or when investment committees ask why the infrastructure cannot be adapted without a seven-figure rearchitecting program. The US rip-and-replace experience showed what happens when vendor choices made for cost reasons become a compliance problem years later. In Vietnam, the same dynamic is forming—but operators still have time to build with flexibility if they act now.
Vietnam’s 5G network is moving ahead, and the opportunity for industrial operators is real. But the opportunity comes with a structural question that rollout statistics cannot answer: whether the vendor stack underneath the network is one that operators can build on for the long term—or one they will eventually need to build around. The smarter move is to deploy selectively, negotiate flexibility, and treat the country’s longer-term ambitions, including 6G, as a signal of direction rather than a decision point.
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