Vietnam Lets Starlink In Without Liberalising Telecoms

Starlink has opened its Vietnamese order book through a trial capped at 600,000 subscribers and scheduled to end in 2030. With urban fibre available at a fraction of its price, the satellite service’s most plausible early market lies in maritime operations, remote commercial sites and backup connectivity rather than mass-market households. 

Vietnam has admitted Starlink through a regulatory exception that gives SpaceX full ownership of its local business but leaves Hanoi in control of the service’s scale, infrastructure and duration. Starlink began accepting Vietnamese orders on August 13, offering residential service from VND1.13 Mn, or about $43 a month, and hardware for VND8.66 Mn.

Vietnam has admitted Starlink through a regulatory exception that gives SpaceX full ownership of its local business but leaves Hanoi in control of the service’s scale, infrastructure and duration.

Starlink began accepting Vietnamese orders on August 13, offering residential service from VND1.13 Mn, or about $43 a month and hardware for VND8.66 Mn. Corporate subscriptions start at VND1.48 Mn a month, Reuters reported. Vietnam is its sixth Southeast Asian market, alongside Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Timor-Leste.

The pricing immediately limits the consumer opportunity. VNPT offers 300 Mbps home fibre from VND215,000 a month, with 500 Mbps available from VND240,000. Starlink’s starting subscription costs more than five times VNPT’s 300 Mbps package, while its hardware would buy about 40 months of that fibre service.

How Key ASEAN Markets Allowed Starlink’s Entry 

Market	Opening	Regulatory Model and Early Use
Vietnam	Orders opened in August 2026	Controlled trial capped at 600,000 subscribers; four gateways authorised; scheduled to end in 2030
Indonesia	Commercial launch in May 2024	ISP and satellite terminal permits; local provider co-operation; rural and healthcare connectivity
Singapore	Facilities-based licence issued in September 2023	Business-only market focussed on maritime and enterprise connectivity
Malaysia	Commercial launch in July 2023	Company-specific 100% foreign-ownership exemption; 10-year licences; initial focus on education and remote connectivity
The Philippines	Commercial launch in February 2023	Broad telecom liberalisation; remote access, disaster response and an announced direct-to-cell proof of concept

Starlink Consumer Pricing vs Home Broadband in Key ASEAN Economies

Market	Starlink residential subscription	One-time residential hardware cost	Comparable home broadband plan	Starlink monthly price multiple
Vietnam	From VND1.13 Mn/month	VND8.66 Mn	VNPT Home 1, 300 Mbps: VND215,000/month	5.3x
Indonesia	From IDR510,000/month	From IDR4.75 Mn in selected areas	IndiHome, 100 Mbps: from IDR280,000/month	1.8x
Singapore	No residential service; Business pricing is quote-based	N/A	No like-for-like consumer comparison	N/A
Malaysia	RM135/month for Residential 100; RM235/month for full Residential	From RM930 in selected areas	Unifi, 100 Mbps: promotional RM89/month	1.5x at entry tier
The Philippines	From PHP4,099/month	Address-dependent; no consistently verifiable national price	PLDT Fiber Unli All, up to 200 Mbps: PHP1,399–1,499/month	2.7–2.9x

Editor’s note: Prices were checked on August 16, 2026, and may vary by location. The price multiples compare Starlink’s monthly residential subscription with the listed home-broadband plan and exclude hardware and installation charges. They are not adjusted for connection speed or availability. The PLDT range reflects different prices displayed on current versions of the company’s website. Indonesia’s IndiHome offer includes a temporary upgrade from 100 Mbps to 200 Mbps for 360 days and an IDR50,000 installation charge.

That leaves little reason for households with reliable fixed broadband to switch. Vietnam’s terrestrial network already covers most of the country. By late 2025, fibre connections had reached about 85% of households, according to the Vietnam Telecommunications Authority, while fixed broadband speeds ranked among the world’s 10 fastest on Ookla’s Speedtest index.

Starlink‘s proposition becomes stronger where fibre is unavailable, costly to extend or vulnerable to local disruption. Early customers are more likely to include vessels, offshore operations, remote warehouses and construction sites, as well as companies seeking a backup connection for critical facilities.

Maritime demand has already been tested. Starlink supported Vietnamese coastguard drones in the South China Sea and Gulf of Thailand before the earlier pilot was interrupted in November 2023, Reuters reported. The suspension followed stalled negotiations over SpaceX’s demand to control its local subsidiary.

Vietnamese rules had prevented a foreign investor from holding a controlling interest in a telecommunications company with network infrastructure. Hanoi eventually removed that obstacle through a controlled low-Earth-orbit satellite programme under Resolution 193, rather than through a wider change to its telecom investment regime.

The arrangement allows Starlink Services Vietnam, established in September 2025 with charter capital of VND30 Bn, or approximately $1.1 Mn, to remain wholly foreign-owned. It also caps the trial at 600,000 subscribers, limits it to the end of 2030 and subjects fixed and mobile services to defence, public-security and spectrum oversight.

Four ground gateways have been authorised, although this does not mean all four are already operating. Regulators have also warned that using uncertified imported terminals could attract fines and equipment confiscation.

Hanoi has, therefore, conceded the ownership point that stalled the original talks while retaining control over almost everything else. The government can determine the services offered, geographical coverage, frequencies and conditions under which the trial ends.

The decision also carried trade significance. SpaceX had signalled the scale of its ambitions months earlier. In September 2024, the company told Vietnamese leader To Lam that it planned to invest $1.5 Bn in the country as it sought approval for Starlink, according to the government and Reuters. In fact, Reuters reported in February 2025 that people familiar with the discussions viewed the proposed ownership concession as an overture to Washington as Hanoi sought to contain tariff risks arising from its large trade surplus with the US.

The Starlink decision became one element in a wider economic negotiation, although the regulatory framework also reflects Vietnam’s longer-term need for additional communications infrastructure.

That need is visible in the fragility of its international connections. Three of Vietnam’s five active submarine cables were disrupted simultaneously in June 2024, affecting access to overseas services. It was the country’s second major series of cable failures in little more than a year, after problems affected all five in early 2023.

The outages strengthen the case for greater network diversity, but they do not establish that Starlink will provide an entirely independent international route. That will depend on how Vietnamese traffic is carried through its authorised gateways, terrestrial backhaul and satellite links. Its clearer advantage is at the last mile, where a satellite terminal can preserve connectivity when local fibre or mobile connections are unavailable.

For a factory, port or logistics operator, the calculation is not simply whether Starlink costs more each month. It is whether the cost of losing production data, inventory access, payments or operational monitoring is higher.

Vietnam already has one reported enterprise commitment. Budget carrier Vietjet signed an in-flight connectivity agreement with Starlink Services Vietnam in May 2026, disclosed in the airline’s first-half governance filing. That single deal does not yet show which sector will move first at scale, but earlier Southeast Asian markets indicate where the premium has proved acceptable.

Indonesia, the previous major regional economy to admit Starlink, launched the service through three health centres in May 2024, including one on the remote Aru Islands. By late 2025, nearly 60% of its Starlink users were in rural areas, according to Opensignal, compared with 24% for fixed wireless and 7% for fixed-line services.

That rural skew developed even though Starlink remains more expensive than terrestrial broadband. Its Indonesian entry plan now starts at IDR510,000 a month, while Telkomsel’s IndiHome advertises a 100 Mbps package from IDR280,000, currently accompanied by a temporary speed upgrade. The comparison suggests users are paying the satellite premium mainly where the cheaper fixed option is weak or absent.

Earlier Southeast Asian markets assigned the same technical capability to different commercial roles. In Singapore, where the company currently offers only Starlink Business, it directed the service towards enterprise and maritime connectivity. Singtel added the service to its shipping portfolio in January 2024 for fleet management, remote monitoring, navigation and crew communications.

In Malaysia, early deployment focussed on schools, universities and locations with poor conventional coverage. In the Philippines, terminals have supported remote connectivity and disaster response, while Globe Telecom and Starlink announced a direct-to-cell proof of concept in January 2026 to extend mobile service to remote islands, mountainous areas and emergency-hit locations.

None of these markets demonstrates that satellite broadband can displace functioning fibre on price. They show that demand emerges where the alternative is an unreliable connection or no connection at all. That pattern supports an enterprise and public-infrastructure case for Vietnam without requiring Starlink to become a mass household provider.

The regional expansion also shows no common regulatory route for admitting the service. Indonesia granted internet service provider and satellite-terminal permits and required co-operation with local network-access providers. Singapore placed Starlink within its existing facilities-based licensing system; the company currently offers only business service.

Malaysia offers the closest ownership precedent. Starlink received an exemption from the 49% foreign-equity condition ordinarily attached to its network licences and was allowed to remain wholly foreign-owned. But Malaysia issued 10-year licences, giving SpaceX more operating certainty than Vietnam’s temporary and adjustable pilot.

The Philippines took the broadest route. It amended its Public Service Act in 2022 to permit full foreign ownership across telecommunications and several other service sectors. SpaceX could establish a wholly owned subsidiary as part of an economy-wide liberalisation, rather than negotiating a company-specific exemption.

Vietnam has chosen the narrowest of these approaches. Resolution 193 removes the foreign-ownership ceiling for low-Earth-orbit satellite providers but leaves the government in control of where they may operate, what they may offer and when the experiment ends. The waiver is, therefore, less a signal of wider telecom liberalisation than a mechanism for admitting a capability the country wants without permanently surrendering regulatory leverage.

Amazon Leo, formerly known as Project Kuiper, will test whether that mechanism can become a sector-wide framework. Amazon established a Vietnamese entity and applied to join the controlled satellite pilot in 2025. The application remained under discussion with the government in May 2026.

Comparable terms for a second provider would indicate that Hanoi is building a competitive framework for foreign-controlled satellite systems instead of granting SpaceX a bespoke concession. It would not automatically create a template for semiconductors, cloud infrastructure or other strategic industries, which present different ownership, security and data questions.

For now, Vietnam has opened a satellite communications market without opening its wider telecom regime.

Starlink can take orders and build its local operation, but the government retains the authority to determine how far the service grows and what happens when the trial expires.
With inputs from Agencies