Vietnam eSIM
Data for Vietnam on Viettel and Vinaphone, from $6.89. It never expires, tethering is included, and you install Orbislo once rather than once per trip.
- Networks
- Viettel and Vinaphone
- Real speed
- 56 Mbps median, 13 Mbps for the slowest tenth1,010 travellers, rolling 90 days
- 5G
- partial, on the main islands and in the cities
- Throttle
- None on metered plans
- Tethering
- Allowed on every plan
Plans for Vietnam
| Data | Validity | Price per GB | Price | Buy |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 GB | Never expires | $6.89 | $6.89 | |
| 3 GB | Never expires | $3.30 | $9.89 | |
| 5 GBMost travellers | Never expires | $2.78 | $13.89 | |
| 10 GB | Never expires | $2.19 | $21.89 | |
| 20 GB | Never expires | $1.79 | $35.89 |
Every plan works the moment you land. Unused data returns to your wallet when the plan ends, and there is 100 MB of free rescue data on your account even at zero balance.
What 56 Mbps actually means in Vietnam
Travellers on Orbislo in Vietnam see a median download of 56 Mbps, measured across 1010 real sessions rather than a speed test we ran ourselves. That puts Vietnam well above the Asia median of 43.9 Mbps, and 61st out of the 159 destinations we have measured.
The tenth percentile is 13 Mbps. That gap between the median and the floor is normal and it is where the frustration lives: the connection is quick most of the time and noticeably slow in the busiest few percent of moments, typically at transport hubs at peak hour.
That is enough for everything most travellers do: maps, messaging, video calls, streaming at high definition, and tethering a laptop for ordinary work. It is not enough to be casual about uploading a day of raw photographs.
Which networks you will be on
Orbislo carries traffic in Vietnam on Viettel and Vinaphone. Your phone is not tied to one of them. When the network you are attached to congests or drops, the profile moves you to the other, and it happens without a prompt and without you noticing anything except that the connection kept working.
This matters more than the headline speed. Almost every travel eSIM sold today resells a single upstream agreement per country, so when that one network has a bad hour you have a bad hour with it and your only option is to buy a second eSIM from somebody else. A profile with more than one network behind it can make a decision you never see.
5G in Vietnam: partial, on the main islands and in the cities. A well provisioned 4G cell comfortably outruns a congested 5G one, which is why the figure above is measured throughput rather than a network generation.
What data costs in Vietnam
A 100 MB plan for Vietnam starts at $0.30, which is $0.00 a gigabyte. That is the number to compare between providers, because a headline price attached to a different allowance tells you nothing.
The comparison most providers would rather you did not run is cost per gigabyte actually used. Independent surveys of travel data put the share of purchased data lost to expiry between 20 and 35 percent, because a plan that expires on day thirty deletes what you did not get through. Orbislo data has no expiry date, so the gigabyte you paid for is still there on the next trip. At the same headline price that is 25 to 40 percent more usable data, and in Vietnam it means the effective cost is nearer $0.00 a gigabyte than $0.00.
Because nothing expires, the cheapest way to buy for Vietnam is to buy slightly less than you think you need and top up if you run out. Topping up takes about ten seconds and does not involve installing anything. Buying too much is the expensive mistake everywhere else and merely a neutral one here.
Landing in Vietnam
Install before you fly, on your home wifi. The profile downloads while you still have a connection you trust, then sits dormant until you land in Vietnam and it attaches to Viettel. Median time from tapping install to having service across all Orbislo orders is 41 seconds.
On landing there is one thing to check and it is the thing that goes wrong about sixty percent of the time people tell us they have no service: data roaming has to be switched on for the Orbislo line. It is off by default on both iOS and Android, and it has nothing to do with roaming charges here, because the plan is prepaid and there is no bill to run up. Turn it on for the Orbislo line and leave it off for your home line, and your home number keeps working for calls and bank codes without costing anything.
Coverage across Vietnam
The measurements above are aggregated across Vietnam, and a national median hides real variation. We publish separate figures for Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, Da Nang and Hoi An, because the difference between a capital and a coastal town is usually larger than the difference between two countries.
Outside the cities, coverage follows the same pattern it does everywhere: the main roads and the tourist corridors are well served, and it thins in the mountains and on the water. No travel eSIM changes that, because it is the same physical network the local population uses. What a multi network profile changes is which of the available towers you get to use.
Getting a local SIM in Vietnam
A telecommunications business may only serve a subscriber whose recorded details are complete and match the identity document shown when the contract was signed. It also has to verify and keep those details, and deal with any SIM whose subscriber information turns out to be incomplete or inaccurate.
What is restricted in Vietnam
- Telegram: On 21 May 2025 the Telecommunications Authority told Vietnamese network operators to block Telegram, after police reported widespread illegal content on its channels and the app failed to notify the authorities of its operation, as required since 2025. Operators had to report their blocking measures by 2 June 2025.
- Social media posting: Since 25 December 2024, Decree 147/2024 has required domestic social networks, and foreign platforms with more than 100,000 monthly visits from Vietnam, to verify user accounts with a Vietnamese mobile number, or a personal identification number where the user has none. Only verified accounts may post, comment, livestream or share.
Worth knowing about Vietnam
- You may not use your own identity document to sign a service contract for somebody else, outside the cases telecommunications law allows. A line bought in another traveller's name is a breach by both of you, not a shortcut.
- A telecommunications business is required to stop serving any subscriber who breaks telecommunications law, so a line can be cut off without the operator needing a commercial reason.
- Emergency calling here means the numbers of the police, the fire service and the ambulance service. Operators have to publish those numbers, guarantee that users can reach them, and carry the calls free of charge.
- A foreign national registers a Vietnamese mobile line with a passport that is still valid for use in Vietnam, either under an entry visa or within the maximum stay allowed to visa exempt nationals, or with an electronic identification account.
- Registering a line online through an operator's own app is allowed only for the first three numbers on one identity document. If the app cannot verify the subscriber, the line has to be registered in person at an operator shop or an authorised agent.
- On each network, the first three prepaid numbers are registered by showing an identity document and signing a subscriber confirmation. A fourth prepaid number or more needs a standard form contract signed at a shop the operator itself runs.
- An operator must refuse the contract when the document shown is not an accepted one, is too unclear to be digitised sharply and completely, or carries details that fail to match, or cannot be matched, during verification.
- Operators keep each subscriber's record, including a digitised copy of the identity document and a portrait photo stamped with the date and time it was taken, for as long as the line is active and for at least two years after service ends.
- Since 15 April 2026 a foreign national's name, date of birth, identification number and face can be checked electronically against the national immigration database. Otherwise registration must happen in person, and for a passport holder the operator must run a video call identity check on every number.
- From 15 June 2026, when a Vietnamese line shows up in a different handset, the operator must suspend its outgoing calls and texts within two hours and ask the subscriber to repeat a live face check. Moving a local SIM into another phone interrupts outgoing service until that check is done.
- A line suspended after a handset change that is not re-verified within 30 days loses incoming service too, and the operator terminates the contract five days later.
- Numbers that foreign nationals had already registered with a passport had to be re-verified within 60 days of 15 April 2026. Lines that were not lost outgoing calls and texts, then all service, and were terminated five days after that.
How Vietnam compares across Asia
- Speed rank
- 9 of 28 destinations we have measured in Asia
- Regional median
- 42.95 Mbps
- Consistency
- The slowest tenth still reaches 23 percent of the median
- Upstream networks
- 2, Viettel, Vinaphone
- 5G
- Partial, main islands and cities
- Next fastest nearby
- Brunei, 58 Mbps
- Next slowest nearby
- Thailand, 52 Mbps
- Cities with their own page
- 4: Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, Da Nang, Hoi An
- tenth percentile
- 13 Mbps
- Behind these figures
- 1010 travellers, rolling 90 days
