Decree 13/2023 on Personal Data Protection (PDPD) has stirred a lot of excitement among legal professionals in Vietnam. Recently, such excitement met with the cold hard realities of the difficulties in fulfilling even the basic administrative procedures under PDPD. In particular, in July 2023, the Ministry of Public Security (MPS)  published the required contents of the file for assessment of the impact of personal data processing and the file for assessment of the impact of offshore transferring personal data. The levels of details and analysis required to prepare these files are very demanding. For example, the MPS require these files to include the following information and documents:

1)         Introduction

On 22 June 2023, the National Assembly issued a new Law on E-transactions, which will take effect from 1 July 2024 (LET 2023). The LET 2023 has the following notable points:

• Unless otherwise clearly excluded, the LET 2023 applies to e-transactions in all areas whether by companies, individuals or Government agencies.

• A data message converted from paper document or vice versa must have clear marking that it has been converted from paper document and information of the converter.

• A natural person may not be able to create and use his/her own e-signature and may have to use digital signature for his/her e-transactions.

• For the first time, trust services are introduced. The service provider must be licensed by the Ministry of Information and Communication (MIC).

We discuss below each of these new points and some more. This post is written by Nguyen Quang Vu, Hoang Thi Thanh Thuy, Trinh Phuong Thao and Phan Thi Phuong Mai.

In this post, we provide our comments to the draft Law on Telecom provided to us recently. The comments are prepared by Nguyen Quang Vu and Trinh Phuong Thao.

1.        Data center services and cloud computing services should be excluded from Law on Telecom

Position under the draft Law on Telecom

The draft Law on Telecom:

• considers data center services and cloud computing services to be telecommunication services;

• requires onshore providers of data center services and cloud computing services to obtain a telecom license; and

• requires offshore providers of cross-border data center services and cloud computing services to sign a contract with a Vietnamese telecommunication service provider or to set up a representative office in Vietnam.

If adopted as currently drafted, immediately when the amended Law on Telecom becomes effective:

• all onshore providers of server leasing service will need to obtain a telecom license;

• all onshore software providers who deliver software over the internet (e.g. Google App Store or Apple App Store) will need to obtain a telecom license;

• all onshore e-commerce apps or software which operate in the model of client-server will need to obtain a telecom license; and

• all offshore service providers of cross-border software, software as a services (SaaS), infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and platform as a service (PaaS) or e-commerce services will need to sign a commercial contract with a Vietnamese telecommunication service provider or establish a representative office in Vietnam.