Viettel, the country’s largest telecommunications company, completed building infrastructure and installing equipment for operating a 5G station in the city’s District 10, the Ministry of Information and Communications announced on its news portal.

The operation of this first station in HCMC also marks the first time that Viettel has exploited the Telco Cloud, a virtualized telecom infrastructure to run digital services and agile operations. This will help the company build the whole core network for the 5G technology.

The new platform will help the company reduce preparation time while becoming more flexible in operating the 5G network, officials said.

Its 5G internet speed, as piloted, now stays at 1,000-1,300 megabits per second and the company has said it will work to move up this speed in the future.

The telco has also planned to speed up its 5G network establishment process and will set up 10 more stations in HCMC, the country’s largest metropolis, this month.

Tao Duc Thang, deputy CEO of Viettel Group, said these stations will work as a pilot plan for Viettel to get a complete assessment of its service so that it could launch it commercially next year.

The U.S. and China are currently the only two in the world that have begun offering 5G commercial services.

Viettel launched its first 5G station of Vietnam in Hanoi early this year and made the first 5G phone call in May.

It was the first firm in the country to receive permission to trial 5G services in January. It was followed by MobiFone.

Last November, Information and Communication Minister Nguyen Manh Hung said at a conference that Vietnam should test 5G in 2019 and ensure nationwide coverage by 2020.

“Vietnam should be one of the first countries to launch the network, at least in Hanoi and HCMC,” he had said. The country had been one of the last in Southeast Asia to roll out 4G services.

5G is the latest generation of mobile Internet connectivity, and is expected to offer much faster speeds and more reliable connections on smartphones and other devices compared to the current 3G and 4G technologies.

The center will first build models to predict future socio-economic patterns for the southern metropolis until 2025, with a vision until 2030, said Tran Hoang Ngan, director of the HCMC Institute for Development Studies.

These predictions would not only help HCMC address problems issues like flooding or traffic congestion, but also promote confidence among foreign investors, said the city Party Secretary Nguyen Thien Nhan.

“The cost to run the center is insignificant as it requires little infrastructure. Instead, it mostly requires brainpower,” he said.

The center should come up with a model for the city’s short term (three to five years) and long term (10 years) development. By October, it should be able to simulate one for HCMC’s economy in 2020, he added.

As Vietnam’s most populated city and with the largest-scaled economy, HCMC serves as the engine to drive the whole country forward, said Nhan. As such, becoming a smart city (by using artificial intelligence) would help that engine speed up and avoid future mistakes, he added.

In 2017 the southern metropolis began implementing a plan to transform itself into a smart city by 2020.

The goal of this ambitious plan is to use scientific advances to resolve the problems the city faces, including rapid population growth, unsustainable economic growth, inadequate forecasting, planning and management, poor healthcare, education and transport, pollution, and inefficient public administration.

The four pillars of the plan are the construction of a smart city operation center, a public database, a socio-economic simulation center and a cyber security center.

The city also began studying the use of artificial intelligence to help with this goal.

As an economic hub with more than 10 million residents, HCMC has everything needed to set up a center for studying and applying AI, Nhan had said at a scientific conference last March.

Vietnam’s largest telecommunications company Viettel had announced its 5G trial and made Vietnam’s first 5G phone call in Hanoi in May and said it will expand the test in both the capital city and Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam’s two biggest cities. The military-run company expects to launch commercial 5G services in 2020.

Vietnam Posts and Telecommunications Group (VNPT), the country’s second largest telco and MobiFone, the third largest are still setting up their trial networks, the Ministry of Information and Communications said, as cited in a statement on the government news portal on Saturday.

While VNPT said it will deploy its trial in the same cities as Viettel, MobiFone will test out the technology in the cities of Hanoi, Hai Phong, and Da Nang.

Last November, Minister of Information and Communications Nguyen Manh Hung had said at a conference that Vietnam should test 5G in 2019 and ensure nationwide coverage by 2020.

“Vietnam should be one of the first countries to launch the network, at least in Hanoi and HCMC,” he had said. The country had been one of the last in Southeast Asia to roll out 4G services.

Conglomerate Vingroup signed partnerships last month with Japan’s Fujitsu and the U.S.’s Qualcomm to make 5G smartphones in Vietnam. The group’s vice chairman, Nguyen Viet Quang, claimed that the model will make Vietnam one of the first countries to produce and apply 5G technology.

5G is the latest generation of mobile Internet connectivity, and should offer much faster speeds and more reliable connections on smartphones and other devices compared to the current 3G and 4G technologies.