Vietnam’s Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc led the delegation of government dignitaries who met recently with Ericsson President and CEO Börje Ekholm and Denis Brunetti, Head of Ericsson Vietnam and Myanmar to sign a series of strategic agreements on expanding Industry 4.0 activities in the country.
The Swedish telecommunications company said in a post on its website that an estimated 1 in 10 mobile phones are built in Vietnam and the country’s manufacturing sector continues to grow rapidly.
It also cited a study conducted by the Brookings Institute that Vietnam exported $45 billion worth of mobile phones that were manufactured in the country in2017. Moreover, between 2014 and 2016, the country also added nearly 1.5 million manufacturing jobs.
“Vietnam’s manufacturing sector is experiencing an industrial revolution of its own but to capture the next wave of growth, enabled by 5G and IoT, Ericsson is supporting the Government of Vietnam to help accelerate the adoption of Industry 4.0,” it said.
Under the ‘Industry 4.0 & IoT Innovation Cooperation Agreement’ signed by the two parties, Vietnam’s state- owned VNPT Group – Vietnam’s leading communications service provider– will expand IoT capabilities across the operator’s mobile network by leveraging Ericsson’s IoT cellular capability and VNPT’s IoT ecosystem.
“These capabilities will make it possible to provide new digital services to VNPT’s consumer and enterprise customers as well as support e-Government initiatives,” Ericsson said.
Pham Duc Long, CEO of VNPT Group, was quoted in the Ericsson post that the joint initiative between VNPT and Ericsson supports the group’s ambition of driving smart city and Industry 4.0 initiatives across Vietnam.
“We are creating additional value for our consumer and enterprise customers now through advanced digital services enabled by 4G NB-IoT for less demanding Massive IoT use cases, and then 5G for more advanced use cases with much higher data volumes and extreme low-latency requirements in the very near future,” he said.
Brunetti affirmed that the VNPT Group and Ericsson are seeking to build an innovation platform and foundation for Industry 4.0 through this partnership.
“By providing our 4G NB-IoT capabilities as well as leveraging our recently launched ‘IoT Innovation Hub’ in Vietnam, we are looking to fuel and drive the IoT ecosystem in Vietnam and create momentum towards 5G,” he said.
The Hub was set up with the Vietnam’s Ministry of Science & Technology at the Hoa Lac Hi-Tech Park in Hanoi and will support startups as well as serve as learning and education platform and research and development platform focusing on advanced IoT.
