Vietnam shuns Huawei as it seeks to build Southeast Asia’s first 5G network
- Vietnam is quietly siding with the Trump administration, which has barred Huawei from buying US technology over national security concerns
- It is an outlier in Southeast Asia, where the Philippines, Thailand and Malaysia are open to deploying Huawei technology
“We are not going to work with Huawei right now,” Dung said in an interview at the company’s Hanoi headquarters. “It’s a bit sensitive with Huawei now. There were reports that it’s not safe to use Huawei. So Viettel’s stance is that, given all this information, we should just go with the safer ones. So we choose Nokia and Ericsson from Europe.”
Vietnam’s smaller carriers appear to be shying away from Huawei, as well. MobiFone is using Samsung equipment while Vietnam Telecom Services Company, or Vinaphone, entered into a partnership with Nokia to deploy its 5G network, according to local media.
“I think Huawei is having difficulties in Vietnam right now, since other companies don’t use them as well,” said Dung, whose carrier has about 60 million customers in the nation of about 96 million people.
The Shenzhen-based company counters such concerns by pointing out that governments and customers in 170 countries use its equipment, which poses no greater cybersecurity threat than communications technology from any other vendor. Huawei expects the US restrictions will lower consumer devices revenue by about US$10 billion.
