Foreign companies wanting to provide cross-border internet services will have to follow the regulation under commercial agreements with domestic units. This is one of the draft regulations on telecommunications service licensing and business in the draft decree guiding the implementation of the Law on Telecommunications.

The draft decree says the providing of cross-border telecommunications services, not including services at data centers, cloud computing and internet-based telecommunications services, to users in Vietnam, must be implemented under commercial agreements with Vietnamese telecom carriers.

The Vietnamese partners must be companies licensed to provide telecommunications services and to establish international portals, except under international treaties which call for other regulations.

Providing telecommunications services is understood as using equipment and setting up systems of telecommunications equipment in Vietnam to perform one, several or all of the stages of the process of initiation, processing, transmission, routing, and termination of information for users.

The activities must be carried out through contracts with telecom service users, telecom service agents and telecom carriers for the purpose of making a profit.

If referring to the draft regulation, the units providing satellite internet services across borders, such as Starlink, will be one of the subjects to be covered by the decree.

The draft decree also says that businesses that sign commercial agreements with foreign institutions to provide telecommunication services across borders to users in Vietnam must have technical solutions to ensure information security.

The businesses must implement emergency prevention and stop providing telecommunication services as per requests by competent state agencies.

If providing satellite telecommunication, there must be solutions to ensure that all the traffic generated by satellite subscriber terminals created in Vietnam must go through the ground gateway station. The station must be located on the territory of Vietnam and connected to the public telecommunications network.

If providing services to software development zones and hi-tech zones, under international treaties of which Vietnam is a member, foreign institutions can only provide satellite telecommunication services to units licensed to provide services in the zones.

Foreign institutions then have to ensure cooperation if there are requests from state agencies, in accordance with the laws on cybersecurity.

As for units allowed to provide telecommunications services in software development and hi-tech zones that use services by foreign institutions, they will have to be responsible for managing and ensuring the use of satellite telecommunication services within allowed spheres.

Trong Dat