The Rulebook for Việt Nam's 2030 Rural Connectivity Push Arrives Two Weeks Before the Old Programme Expires

Five months after the Prime Minister approved Việt Nam’s universal telecommunications programme for 2026–2030, the Ministry of Science and Technology has published the manual that makes it run. Thông tư 57/2026/TT-BKHCN explains who pays into the programme, which villages and households get money out of it, how operators are selected and paid, and how the people still being supported under the old 2021–2025 programme are carried across. The timing is tight: the extension that has kept the old programme’s subsidies flowing since January ends on 30 September 2026, and the new circular sets 15-day deadlines that land in the same week.

What the document is

Number and issuer: Thông tư 57/2026/TT-BKHCN, Bộ Khoa học và Công nghệ, signed by Minister Vũ Hải Quân.
Issued and effective: 15 September 2026, effective the same day (Điều 41). The ministry posted the certified copy on its legal-documents portal on 22 September.
Drafted on the proposal of: the Director of the Quỹ Dịch vụ viễn thông công ích Việt Nam (Vietnam Public Utility Telecommunication Service Fund, VTF) — the body that collects the money and signs the contracts.
Size: 6 chapters, 41 articles, plus annexed forms and filling guides; about 90 scanned pages in total.
Legal basis: Luật Viễn thông 24/2023/QH15, Nghị định 163/2024/NĐ-CP, Nghị định 295/2025/NĐ-CP (universal service and its financing), and Quyết định 777/QĐ-TTg of 30 April 2026, which approved the Chương trình cung cấp dịch vụ viễn thông công ích đến năm 2030.

It is the third piece of the new universal-service stack. Thông tư 01/2026/TT-BKHCN supplies the generic forms for Nghị định 295; Thông tư 51/2026/TT-BKHCN, which we covered on 19 September, sets the measured-speed floors a subsidised connection must clear. Thông tư 57 is the programme-specific layer that sits on top of both and cross-references them throughout.

What it changes

A two-tier levy with a formula. Quyết định 777 fixed the contributions: operators with their own network infrastructure pay 0.75% of annual telecom service revenue into the fund; operators without infrastructure pay 0.15%. Điều 5 of the circular turns that into a formula that pro-rates by month, applies the reduction coefficients available under Điều 18 of Nghị định 295, and rounds partial months (15 days or more counts as a full month). Payment is made in two periods (January–June and July–December), by bank transfer in đồng into the fund’s State Treasury account, no later than 45 days after each period closes. After year-end the operator reconciles against audited revenue by 30 June, both sides confirm the figure by 30 September, and any shortfall is due within 30 days; overpayments are carried forward or refunded within 15 days.

An annual planning calendar. Operators send revisions to their contribution plan to the fund before 30 September each year; the fund submits the adjusted plan to the ministry before 31 October; the ministry approves before 15 November (Điều 6).

Seven years of support per village. Under the tender route, a village’s subsidy clock starts in the month after the last piece of infrastructure goes live and runs for 84 consecutive months (Điều 18). Contracts are output-based: payment is docked for shortfalls in coverage, quality or service time, and compliance is judged by the Thông tư 51 measurement rules.

A fixed snapshot of which villages qualify. The first list of eligible villages is frozen as of 30 April 2026 — the date Quyết định 777 was signed — and stays valid even if villages or communes are later merged or renamed (Điều 10). Eligible villages must already have electricity and sit in the 2026–2030 lists of especially disadvantaged ethnic-minority, mountainous, coastal and island communes (Điều 11).

Disaster-hardened base stations. Under task 1.5, each commune that is on the programme’s list, lies in an area with a five-year history of natural disasters and does not yet have a hardened site can receive one base station built to withstand disaster risk level 4 (Điều 9).

New kinds of subsidised access point. Schools, kindergartens (including satellite campuses), commune health stations and ethnic-minority IT support points get one subsidised fixed-broadband line each, and the operator must provide Wi-Fi for the local community at that point (Điều 32 k3). In villages with neither mobile nor fixed service, the programme will fund one low-Earth-orbit satellite “community point” per village, proposed by the commune People’s Committee and also required to offer Wi-Fi (Điều 32 k4). Where no subsidy rate exists yet for LEO service, the operator’s quoted price at planning time is used (Điều 29 k4 b).

Digital identity for poor households. Poor and near-poor households may prove status through the “Thông tin cư trú” section of the VNeID app as well as the paper certificate (Điều 3). They may switch between mobile and fixed broadband with the same operator, or switch operators, and each beneficiary can receive support through only one operator.

Who it affects

Every licensed telecom operator, as a payer — the 0.15% tier catches service-only providers and MVNOs, not just the big network owners.
Viettel, VNPT, MobiFone and other infrastructure operators, as bidders and contractors for village coverage, BTS hardening and school connections.
Satellite broadband providers licensed in Việt Nam, who now have a funded, per-village channel for community access points.
Provincial People’s Committees, which must name a cơ quan chuyên môn and registration offices, survey villages, file reports to the Cục Viễn thông and draw digital coverage maps.
Poor and near-poor households, schools, clinics and fishing-boat owners, who receive subsidised service.

Practical implications

The most urgent line is in Điều 30. Households and institutions already on subsidised service under the 2025 programme do not need to re-register — but the provincial cơ quan chuyên môn must confirm the consolidated list within 15 days of 15 September, and operators running maritime-radio subsidies must send their beneficiary lists within 5 days. With the old programme’s extension capped at 30 September by Quyết định 777, a province that misses these deadlines risks a gap in support. Điều 40 k3 lets the ministry fund the first nine months of 2026 for operators already contracted under the old programme and settle actual costs if the extension ends early.

For operators, the practical change is administrative: a new reconciliation form (Mẫu 01/TĐG), a 30 September confirmation deadline and a twice-yearly payment rhythm to build into finance calendars. For bidders, the preliminary design must now include antenna or splitter locations and, for mobile, a coverage map in the Thông tư 51 format.

Open questions

The smartphone handout is carved out. Điều 1 expressly excludes Nhiệm vụ 3 — the 400,000 smartphones for poor households under Quyết định 777. Guidance on that task will have to come separately.
No repeal clause. The circular does not repeal Thông tư 14/2022/TT-BTTTT, the guidance for the 2025 programme; Điều 40 in fact still relies on its Điều 37–39 for the nine-month settlement.
LEO pricing. Falling back to an operator’s own quotation when no rate exists leaves the price of satellite community points to the market, at least initially.

Sources

This post is general information, not legal advice.