Vietnam Posts and Telecommunications Group (VNPT) is the second telco to score 5G spectrum this month after reportedly winning the auction for the 3700-3800 MHz band.
The Ministry of Information and Communications (MIC) held its auction for the 3700-3800 MHz band on Tuesday. According to VNS, VNPT came away as the sole winner of the spectrum licence, which is valid for 15 years.
The report didn’t say how much VNPT paid for its winning bid, but noted that the MIC set the starting price for the band at VND1.95 trillion (US$78.8 million).
Earlier this month, Viettel Group won the MIC’s auction for the 2500-2600 MHz licence for 4G and 5G services with a bid of VND7.5 trillion, almost double the starting price of VND3.9 trillion.
According to the report, VNPT said the combination of the 3700-3800 MHz band with its existing 1800-MHz licence will give it “a great advantage in promoting 5G” in the future, as well as laying the foundation for 6G.
VNPT is looking at 5G use cases like cloud, IoT, AI, machine learning and data analytics for the industrial sector, the report said.
Meanwhile, the MIC’s 5G auction for the 3800-3900 MHz – which had been scheduled to start last Thursday – was canceled due to “a lack of qualified bidders”, VNS reports.
