Bars on the Screen Are Not Enough: Việt Nam Puts Measured Speed Floors Under Universal Telecom Service

For most of the life of Việt Nam’s universal telecommunications programme, a village counted as served once a base station reached it. Coverage maps were the currency, and the question of whether anything usable actually came down the link was left to the customer. Thông tư 51/2026/TT-BKHCN changes the currency: from now on, a subsidised connection is one that has been measured, at a recorded latitude and longitude, and found fast enough.

What the document is

The full title is Thông tư hướng dẫn việc thực hiện yêu cầu về phổ cập dịch vụ viễn thông đối với từng loại hình dịch vụ viễn thông và đo tốc độ mạng Internet dịch vụ viễn thông công ích — a circular guiding how the universal-service requirement is to be met for each type of telecommunications service, and how Internet speed is to be measured for public-utility telecommunications service.

It was signed in Hà Nội on 19 August 2026 by Bộ trưởng Bộ Khoa học và Công nghệ Vũ Hải Quân, at the proposal of the Cục trưởng Cục Viễn thông. Điều 8 khoản 1 brings it into force on the same day it was signed. The instrument is compact — eight articles plus an annex containing two forms — and it is squarely implementing law: it details khoản 1 Điều 5 and điểm c khoản 8 Điều 6 of Nghị định 295/2025/NĐ-CP of 15 November 2025, the decree on public-utility telecommunications activity and its financing under Luật Viễn thông số 24/2023/QH15. The third legal basis is Nghị định 225/2026/NĐ-CP of 24 June 2026 on the functions and structure of Bộ Khoa học và Công nghệ — a reminder that telecom rule-making moved to the science and technology ministry in the 2025 reorganisation, and that the circulars replacing the old TT-BTTTT stock now carry a TT-BKHCN number.

What it changes

Hard speed floors, by technology. Điều 3 sets the quality a publicly funded connection must deliver. For terrestrial mobile broadband: an average download of at least 40 Mbit/s and an average upload of at least 10 Mbit/s on 4G, and 100 Mbit/s down and 30 Mbit/s up on 5G. A fixed terrestrial broadband package must offer a data rate of at least 100 Mbit/s. Fixed satellite broadband must reach an average of 40 Mbit/s down and 10 Mbit/s up, and must honour the satellite provider’s own service-quality commitment. Offshore platforms and drilling rigs (nhà giàn, giàn khoan trên biển) are exempted from all three sets of thresholds by Điều 3 khoản 5.

“Has signal” stops being the test. The sharper change is in Điều 4. A thôn or bản qualifies as a location needing universal mobile service not only where the village centre or the densest cluster of houses gets no terrestrial mobile signal from any operator, but also where there is a signal and a user-experience measurement with the i-Speed tool returns a quality below the level the serving operator has itself published. A village with three bars and an unusable connection is now, by definition, an unserved village. Điều 5 does the parallel job for fixed broadband, where the test remains infrastructural: no fixed-broadband infrastructure from any operator at the village centre or densest household cluster.

Technology neutrality is written into the rule. Điều 3 khoản 1 requires a technology-neutral approach and forbids mandating a single technology. Low-orbit, geostationary and other satellite options are to be used alongside mobile and fixed solutions, particularly for isolated households, terrain-divided areas, and places where a base station or fibre run is not viable. Fixed Wireless Access, Wi-Fi point-to-multipoint, Wi-Fi mesh and microwave links are expressly encouraged.

How measurement works

Điều 6 is the operational heart of the circular. Measurement for reporting purposes happens no earlier than 15 days after the operator notifies that service is live in the area. If the result misses the quality requirement, the operator may optimise the network and re-measure within 15 days of notifying that it has done so.

The measuring instrument is not left open. Tests must use the Vietnamese Internet speed measurement system VNNIC Internet Speed, built and run by Trung tâm Internet Việt Nam under Bộ Khoa học và Công nghệ — the i-Speed by VNNIC app on Android and iOS, or the websites speedtest.vn and i-speed.vn. Each location takes five samples, indoor and outdoor for mobile, at least 30 seconds apart; the reported figure is the average of the five. The tester must record longitude and latitude (WGS84 format), the address, the date and time, download and upload speeds, and a link to each result. Devices must be kept away from microwave ovens, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth transmitters and signal generators, with no bandwidth-hungry background apps running.

Two guardrails matter. Điều 6 khoản 2 requires results to be honest, objective and reflective of the real user experience, and states that interfering with or falsifying a result voids the measurement and is dealt with under law. And Điều 6 khoản 8 requires the record (Mẫu số 01) to be signed by the operator’s representative, by the village head or a benefiting household, and confirmed by the state authority assigned by the provincial People’s Committee — a three-signature document, not an operator self-declaration.

Finally, Điều 6 khoản 9 draws a boundary that operators should note: these measurements serve the universal-service objective and do not replace ordinary telecom service-quality management under existing standards and technical regulations.

Who it affects

Telecom enterprises bidding for, ordered to supply, or assigned universal-service tasks by the Quỹ Dịch vụ viễn thông công ích Việt Nam carry the heaviest new load. Under Điều 7 khoản 5 they must help provincial authorities build the digital map, propose a preliminary design with a technology solution on a coverage map, lead the measurement exercise and report results, maintain quality for the whole obligation period, supply technical data on demand, and take responsibility for the accuracy and truthfulness of everything they submit.

Provincial People’s Committees and their Sở Khoa học và Công nghệ get a mapping duty. Điều 7 khoản 1 tells them to build a digital map of the villages and other difficult areas to be covered, the household locations, and the sites where infrastructure would go, plus a household and population count on Mẫu số 02 — down to the head of household’s name, address, resident count and WGS84 coordinates — and send it to the Fund.

VNNIC must keep i-Speed running safely and continuously, store measurement data completely and accurately, and make it retrievable for inspection, supervision and acceptance testing. Cục Viễn thông handles guidance and escalations.

Practical implications

For operators, the commercial logic shifts. Subsidy acceptance now turns on a number produced by a government-run tool at a location the government mapped, not on a coverage claim; and because the yardstick in Điều 4 is the operator’s own published service level, advertising an ambitious figure creates the risk of having your own existing coverage reclassified as inadequate. The 15-day wait plus 15-day re-measurement window is a workable but finite remediation path.

For provinces, the digital map becomes the entry ticket: a village that is not on the map, with coordinates, is not in the Fund’s pipeline. For households, the practical change is that a resident or village head signs the acceptance record — a small but real say in whether a connection is declared good enough.

The wider frame is Quyết định 777/QĐ-TTg of 30 April 2026, which approved the universal telecommunications service programme through to 31 December 2030, with support including 400,000 smartphones for poor and near-poor households. At the end of 2025 roughly 500 thôn still had no terrestrial mobile coverage and around 2,500 thôn in especially disadvantaged communes had no fixed broadband. Those are the places this circular’s measurement protocol will be applied to first.

Open questions

Three things the text leaves unresolved. First, Điều 8 contains no express repeal clause — nothing says what happens to Thông tư 14/2022/TT-BTTTT of 28 October 2022, which set the catalogue and quality of public-utility telecom services and guided the programme running to 2025. The new stack (Nghị định 295/2025, Quyết định 777/QĐ-TTg, this circular) plainly supersedes it in practice, but readers should not assume a formal repeal that the instrument does not state.

Second, the same-day entry into force is unusual for a circular. Điều 53 of the 2025 law on promulgation of legal documents generally requires at least 45 days for central-level instruments, with an exception for documents made under the shortened procedure; the circular itself does not say which route it took.

Third, five samples at least 30 seconds apart is a thin statistical basis, and the circular sets no rule about time of day, weekday versus weekend, or busy-hour loading. A measurement campaign run at 10am on a Tuesday will flatter a network in a way an evening test would not — and nothing in Điều 6 prevents it.

Sources

This post is general information about a published legal document, not legal advice; consult a qualified Vietnamese lawyer about your own situation.