One industry analyst said he thought it unlikely that Viettel was now poised to become a serious competitor in its own right.
"It cost the other players billions of dollars to develop their own 5G portfolios and they didn't do it overnight," commented Dan Bieler, an analyst at Forrester Research.
"I'm sceptical from a perspective of how much capital expenditure Viettel really has available to fund such research and then manufacture these products.
"If this is only about using certain components it has manufactured and designed, then that would not be such a huge story - but it's a very large claim to suggest it is in the same league as Nokia, Ericsson and Huawei."
Another expert also expressed reservations.
"Even if it they could get past other hurdles, Viettel would have to pay patent and royalty fees to the likes of Qualcomm, Huawei and Ericsson, which would make it financially unrealistic to create and sell its own infrastructure," suggested Dimitris Mavrakis, from ABI Research.
"It would have to pay exorbitant amounts - the technology specifications and the intellectual property rights are very tightly controlled.
"It's not as if anyone can just jump in and create their own, otherwise other industry giants like AT&T, Verizon and Vodafone would also have done the same."
