Da Nang wants to support smartphones for poor families

Leaders of the Da Nang People’s Committee announced Thursday to have submitted a proposal to the city People’s Council, the legislative unit, to issue a resolution defining the policy to support the cost of buying smartphones for poor households in the area.

The city proposes a maximum support of VND2 million per device for each case of poor household when all members of that household do not yet have smartphones.

Each household is supported once at most.

According to an approved plan, by September this year, the city will turn off the 2G network for 2G-only mobile devices.

By then, 2G-only phones can no longer be used for listening, calling, or texting.

Tran Chi Cuong, Da Nang’s vice chairman, said that the city currently has more than 3,800 poor households that do not have smartphones.

Recently, the Telecommunications Department under the Ministry of Information and Communications announced that private companies will support 2,010 phones for families that do not yet have smartphones in the city, Vietnam’s third largest and central hub.

Thus, there are still more than 1,800 near-poor and poor households not yet supported, he said.

As of mid-2023 Vietnam had over 120 million mobile phone subscribers, 22 million of whom used the 2G network.

However, a significant portion of the latter also have smartphones and use 2G phones as secondary devices.

The shutdown of the 2G network will help free up bandwidth for newer network technologies.

Since the end of 2022 some service providers such as Viettel, Vinaphone and MobiFone have been shutting down 2G and 3G networks in areas with low demand.

Vietnam’s 4G coverage stands at 99.8%, higher than the average of 99.4% for developed countries.