Declare Before Launch, Publish Quarterly Checks, Inspect Only on Suspicion: Việt Nam Rewrites Its Telecom Service Quality Rules for April 2027

For thirteen years the rulebook for how Vietnamese telecom operators prove the quality of what they sell has been Thông tư 08/2013/TT-BTTTT, signed on 26 March 2013 under the 2009 Telecommunications Law by a ministry that was merged out of existence in 2025. It was patched in 2020, trimmed in 2023 when its periodic reports were abolished, and decentralised in May 2026, then consolidated on 25 August 2026 as Văn bản hợp nhất 10/2026/VBHN-TT-BKHCN so that anyone could still read it in one piece. On Saturday 31 October 2026 the Minister of Science and Technology, Vũ Hải Quân, signed its replacement. Thông tư 64/2026/TT-BKHCN, “Quy định về quản lý chất lượng dịch vụ viễn thông”, was posted on the Government portal on 2 November and takes effect on 1 April 2027.

The new text is shorter than the old one, but it moves the centre of gravity. Operators declare quality before they sell, not within sixty days after. They publish a quarterly summary of their own checks on a deadline. They keep a quality database the regulator can plug into. In exchange, the annual inspection plan and the annual measurement plan that the old circular required every January are gone: the state now inspects when there are signs of a violation, or under a thematic plan approved before 20 November of the preceding year, and it publishes the decisions and results. A crowd-sourced layer is added on top, with monthly results from the national speed-test system, explicitly for reference only.

What the document is

Number and body: Thông tư 64/2026/TT-BKHCN, Bộ Khoa học và Công nghệ (Ministry of Science and Technology), issued on the proposal of the Director of Cục Viễn thông (the Telecommunications Authority).
Signed: 31 October 2026 by Minister Vũ Hải Quân. Effective: 1 April 2027 (Điều 24).
Structure: 8 chapters, 26 articles and 7 forms (Mẫu số 01 to 07) covering the declaration letter, the declaration itself, the provincial receipt, the self-declaration, the quarterly check result, the initial incident notice and the incident report.
Legal basis: Luật Viễn thông 24/2023/QH15 (the 2023 Telecommunications Law, whose Điều 69 defines the regulator and whose Điều 55 lets the ministry issue the list of services subject to mandatory quality management), the standards law as amended by Luật 70/2025/QH15, Nghị định 163/2024/NĐ-CP, Nghị định 217/2025/NĐ-CP on specialised inspection, Nghị định 22/2026/NĐ-CP and Nghị định 225/2026/NĐ-CP.
What it repeals from 1 April 2027: Thông tư 08/2013/TT-BTTTT, Thông tư 33/2020/TT-BTTTT, and Điều 1 and Điều 4 of Thông tư 21/2026/TT-BKHCN (the May 2026 decentralisation circular, whose other articles on interconnection, equipment testing and other procedures survive).
What it does not touch: the list of services under mandatory quality management. That list is Thông tư 28/2026/TT-BKHCN, in force since 15 July 2026, and it names four groups: fixed broadband Internet over FTTH/xPON or cable modem (QCVN 34:2022/BTTTT), voice on mobile networks (QCVN 36:2022/BTTTT), 4G mobile Internet (QCVN 81:2019/BTTTT) and 5G mobile Internet (QCVN 126:2021/BTTTT with its 2024 amendment, latency self-declared). The 2G and 3G services of the old list dropped out in July.
History: the draft was put out for comment on the ministry portal from 4 to 25 July 2026. The ministry framed the direction in an August note as “đơn giản hóa thủ tục, tăng cường hậu kiểm”: simpler procedures, stronger ex-post checking.

What changes compared with the 2013 rules

Declare before you sell, not after. Under the consolidated 2013 text, an operator launching a listed service had sixty days from the start of service to complete the declaration. Điều 5 of the new circular requires the declaration to be done “trước khi cung cấp dịch vụ cho công cộng”, before the service is offered to the public. The mechanics are unchanged from the May 2026 decentralisation: one dossier (Mẫu số 01 and 02) filed with the provincial People’s Committee where the head office sits, in person, by post, through the National Public Service Portal or through VNeID; a receipt (Mẫu số 03) within two working days, with a copy to Cục Viễn thông; a fresh declaration within sixty days whenever the relevant national technical regulation changes or the declared content changes. The declared level may not be below the QCVN level.

No more notices at the counter. The old rules required the declaration to be posted where customers could read it at every point of sale and every public service point. The new Điều 5 and Điều 7 require publication only in a “Quản lý chất lượng dịch vụ” section of the operator’s official website, and the service contract or the terms of use must carry a link to that section. The contract clause committing the operator to “đảm bảo chất lượng dịch vụ cung cấp cho khách hàng theo đúng chất lượng dịch vụ mà doanh nghiệp đã công bố” stays.

Self-declaration is narrowed and sharpened. The 2013 text asked every operator to self-declare, on its website, a voluntary standard for any service not on the mandatory list. Điều 6 of the new circular makes self-declaration (Mẫu số 04) a formal duty for three named categories, before official public launch: data centre services, cloud computing services, and basic telecommunications services provided over the Internet, the over-the-top messaging and calling apps that the 2023 Telecommunications Law brought within its scope. For OTT services the self-declaration must follow point e of Điều 28(2) of that law. For all other services, self-declaration is merely encouraged.

Quarterly self-checks get a rotation rule and a publication deadline. Both old and new texts require a quarterly check that includes real measurement of each listed service in at least three provinces, or in every province served if fewer than three. Điều 10 adds three things. The provinces chosen may not repeat within the last twelve months, unless the operator needs to verify a degradation, handle a complaint or respond to the regulator. The measurement can be done in-house or by a designated conformity assessment organisation, and broadband providers are told to consult the crowd-sourced speed data when choosing where to look. The result, on Mẫu số 05, must be published in the website section within twenty days of the end of the quarter. The old “Quy chế tự kiểm tra” that had to be sent to Cục Viễn thông within sixty days becomes an internal “Quy chế kiểm tra, kiểm soát” that must now also include the complaint-handling process; nothing says it must be filed. An operator without its own network, which in practice means a mobile virtual network operator, may use the host network’s data and results for its quarterly check, provided the wholesale contract says so.

A quality database is now an obligation. Chapter IV is new. Điều 11 requires each operator to build a database holding the detail behind its declarations, its periodic, ad hoc and incident reports, its check results and its quality control, to keep it for at least two years, and to share it with the regulator on request. Điều 20 tasks Cục Viễn thông with building the national database, connecting it to the operators’ databases and sharing it with the provinces “khi sẵn sàng về hạ tầng kỹ thuật”, when the technical infrastructure is ready. Điều 23 obliges operators to update and share their data under the authority’s guidance. Periodic reports themselves are no longer specified here; Điều 12 defers to the ministry’s general periodic-reporting regime.

Outages must be flagged within four hours. The trigger is the same as before: a listed service unusable across one or more provinces, between networks or internationally for two hours or more, now with an explicit carve-out for disasters. The response is two-step instead of one. Điều 13 requires an initial notice on Mẫu số 06 to Cục Viễn thông and the provincial authority within the next four hours, by e-document, e-mail or another agreed channel, and then a written report on cause, impact and remedy on Mẫu số 07 within five working days. The old rule was a single written report within three working days.

Inspection becomes exception-based. The 2013 circular had Cục Viễn thông issue an annual inspection plan every January, the provincial departments every February, with at least seven working days’ notice to the operator, plus a separate annual measurement plan and ad hoc measurements. All of that is gone. Điều 14 recognises two forms only: inspection when there are signs of violation or on assignment by the Minister or a provincial chairman, and thematic inspection “trong trường hợp cần thiết”. Thematic plans are drafted by Cục Viễn thông for the Minister’s approval before 20 November of the preceding year, mirrored by provinces if they wish, and sent to the Government Inspectorate to weed out overlap. Decisions, deadlines and conduct follow Nghị định 217/2025/NĐ-CP on specialised inspection. Measurement for inspection and monitoring (Điều 18) is done by designated conformity assessment organisations that keep their data for two years. The old clause obliging the measurement body to tell the operator the place, time and content in advance does not appear in the new text.

Crowd-sourced speed tests enter the law, with a fence around them. Điều 19 gives legal footing to measurement “thông qua trải nghiệm của người sử dụng”, the tests users run on their own devices against the national Internet speed measurement system operated by Trung tâm Internet Việt Nam (VNNIC) at speedtest.vn. Results are published monthly on the websites of Cục Viễn thông and the provincial authorities. VNNIC shares the data with each operator so it can improve. The same article says these results do not replace QCVN measurement, cannot be used to conclude that a service does or does not conform, and “không làm phát sinh trách nhiệm xử phạt vi phạm hành chính”, do not give rise to administrative penalties.

The regulator must show its own work. Điều 8 requires the central and provincial authorities to publish inspection decisions and results, thematic plans and their outcomes, the relevant legal texts and the user-experience results. The 2013 text had a similar duty for plans and results; the new one adds the user data and drops the annual public quality report.

Who is affected

Mobile network operators and the virtual operators riding on them, for voice, 4G and 5G. MVNOs get the explicit option to lean on host-network data.
Fixed broadband providers on fibre and cable, whose quarterly checks should now be informed by speedtest.vn results.
Data centre and cloud providers, who for the first time have a named self-declaration duty before launch.
Over-the-top messaging and calling services, which must self-declare under the 2023 law’s Điều 28, a duty that applies to foreign-run apps as much as to domestic ones.
Provincial People’s Committees and their specialised departments (in practice the provincial Departments of Science and Technology), which receive declarations, issue receipts, publish results and may run their own thematic inspections.
Consumers, who gain a mandatory website section with declarations, quarterly check summaries and a complaints channel, a contractual link to it, and a monthly public dataset of real-world speeds.

Practical implications

Operators have five months. The transition clause (Điều 25) keeps every receipt issued by Cục Viễn thông or a provincial People’s Committee before 1 April 2027 valid until the next re-declaration is due, so companies that filed under the July 2026 list do not refile. Anyone who has not completed a declaration or self-declaration by that date gets sixty days from it, which runs to the end of May 2027. Between now and April the sensible checklist is:

stand up the website section with the contents of Điều 7 and put a working link to it into every contract template and terms-of-use sheet;
rewrite the internal check regulation to cover compliance checks, field measurement and complaint handling, and build a twelve-month rotation of provinces for each listed service;
make sure the quarterly result can be produced on Mẫu số 05 and published within twenty days of quarter end, which for the first full quarter under the new rules means by 20 July 2027;
give the network operations centre a four-hour clock for the initial outage notice and a five-working-day clock for the written report;
design the quality database with the four data classes in Điều 11 and a two-year retention, ready to connect to the authority’s system;
for cloud, data centre and OTT services, prepare the Mẫu số 04 self-declaration before any new public launch.

For users the practical change is visibility. From April 2027 the contract will point at a page where the operator’s declared levels, quarterly checks and complaint process must sit, and the regulator’s monthly speed-test tables will offer an independent reference, even if the law is careful to say that a bad month on speedtest.vn is not by itself a violation.

Open questions

Which periodic report, and how often? The 2023 reporting circular abolished the old quarterly quality reports to Cục Viễn thông. The new Điều 12 says periodic reports follow the ministry’s reporting regime without naming it, so the actual cadence depends on a separate instrument.
The first thematic plan. Plans must be approved before 20 November of the preceding year, but the circular only takes effect on 1 April 2027. Whether a 2027 plan will be adopted under the old or the new framework is not stated.
How far the OTT self-declaration reaches. The circular ties it to the Telecommunications Law’s Điều 28, which addresses basic telecom services over the Internet in general terms. How a foreign messaging platform files a Mẫu số 04 and with whom is not spelled out here.
Rotation versus coverage. Three provinces a quarter with no repeats in twelve months means twelve distinct provinces a year per service, out of thirty-four. Nationwide operators will take almost three years to visit every province once under the minimum, unless they measure more than the floor.
Publication. At the time of writing the circular appears only on the Government’s document portal and in the signed PDF; the ministry’s own legal-document list and the Công báo have not yet carried it.

Sources

This post is general information, not legal advice.