Vietnam’s Starlink pilot and digital sovereignty in Southeast Asia

“The pilot is capped at 600,000 subscribers, runs for five years to January 1, 2031, and requires four domestic gateway stations. The approval covers four gateway stations in three locations: Phú Thọ, Đà Nẵng, and two sites in Ho Chi Minh City. The official rationale for in-country gateways is connectivity and compliance with cybersecurity requirements. The domestic-gateway requirement is consistent with shorter transmission paths and lower latency. It is tied to cybersecurity, spectrum control, and interference management, and strengthens domestic oversight by routing traffic through facilities under Vietnamese jurisdiction.” “This reflects the same logic that is applied to subsea cable landing stations concerning regulations around control of landing facilities, conveying a broader theme of state infrastructure sovereignty. Landing station rules determine where a cable comes ashore and who controls the facility. Gateway siting requirements determine where satellite traffic is routed and can shape who has visibility over it. In both cases the state is extracting connectivity value from foreign-controlled infrastructure while using regulatory conditions to preserve control over data flows, thus limiting the sovereignty exposure that comes with it…”

https://www.geopoliticalmonitor.com/vietnams-starlink-pilot-and-digital-sovereignty-in-southeast-asia/