On March 7, 2023, the Brazilian National Telecommunications Agency (ANATEL) published Bill No. 2436 on its website. The purpose of the Act is to establish a mandatory set of enforceable minimum cybersecurity requirements (password strength, data sharing, vulnerability updates, etc.) to assess the compliance of the following user-end devices for general public use that connect users to Internet services. Typical equipment includes modems, routers, and wireless access points.

The new regulations will come into force on March 10, 2024. Click on this link to view the original document.

On January 10, 2023, the Ministry of Communications of Vietnam launched a public consultation on the draft notice of the "National Technical Specifications (Standards) for Land Mobile User Equipment - Radio Access (2G/3G/4G LTE Terminals)". The standard number is QCVN 117:2023/BTTTT, which is applicable to GSM, W-CDMA, and e-UTRA mobile devices. The effective date of the standard is expected to be March 1, 2024, and the enforcement date is July 1, 2024.

The main changes compared to QCVN 117:2020/BTTTT are as follows:

• New LTE bands: 2300-2400 MHz (B40), 2500-2690 MHz (B41), 703 MHz – 733 MHz / 758 MHz – 788 MHz (B28);
• The handset must be able to operate on one of the LTE/4G bands specified in the standard;
• For non-mobile phone terminals, it is not mandatory to support 4G/LTE technology.

The international equivalents to this standard are ETSI EN 301 908-13 V13.2.1 and ETSI EN 301 908-1 V15.1.1.

Click this link to view the full text of the draft standard, click this link to view the original public consultation, which is open until 10 March 2023.

On December 8, 2022, Vietnam MIC issued a new QCVN 132:2022/BTTTT National Technical Regulations on Electrical Safety Requirements for Telecommunications and Information Terminal Equipment. The HS codes of products covered by this regulation are specified in Annex T, such as desktops, tablets, laptops, TVs, set-top boxes, DECT phones, etc.

The reference standard for this technical regulation is IEC 62368-1:2018 – Audio/video, information and communication technology equipment – Part 1: Safety requirements. The technical regulation will be mandatory from January 1, 2024.

Click this link to view the original MIC announcements and regulations.

On December 7, the European Union officially published the revised Directive (EU) 2022/2380 on universal chargers to supplement the specific implementation requirements of 3.3(a) of the RED Directive Directive 2014/53/EU for universal charging interfaces.

The Amendment Directive covers a total of 13 types of wireless devices, including smartphones, tablets, digital cameras, wireless headphones, handheld game consoles, portable speakers, e-books, keyboards, mice, portable navigation systems and laptops. According to the requirements of the new directive, all 13 types of equipment mentioned above must be equipped with a USB Type-C charging port in accordance with EN IEC 62680-1-3:2021 and can be charged using a charging cable that complies with the same standard, where devices that support fast charging should support the USB PD protocol in accordance with EN IEC 62680-1-2:2021. In addition, consumers and users may choose to purchase devices with unbundled chargers, and the manufacturer or seller should indicate whether the product is equipped with a charger with a specific mark on the packaging, indicating the charger power range requirements and the supported fast charging protocols.

The new directive will be mandatory in all EU member states from 28 December 2024, with the requirement for laptop devices to be mandatory on 28 April 2026, and new devices entering the EU market after the mandatory date should meet the requirements of the directive.

On 23 November 2022, the European Commission published Commission Implementing Decision (EU) 2022/2307 entitled "Revision of Implementing Decision (EU) 2022/179 on the designation and provision of the frequency bands 5150-5250 MHz, 5250-5350 MHz and 5470-5725 MHz in accordance with the technical conditions specified in the Annex". The revision comes in response to a request by the European automotive industry for the European Commission to confirm the use scenarios of the 5470-5725MHz band in Decision (EU) 2022/179 published on 8 February 2022. The European Postal and Telecommunications Commission (CEPT) then conducted a study and finally updated the implementation date from 1 March 2022 to 30 June 2023 with no technical changes in the requirements given in (EU) 2022/2307.

Click on this link to view the original decision (EU) 2022/2307.

On August 29, 2022, the Ministry of Industry and Trade (MOIT) of Vietnam published a draft circular on the "National Technical Regulations on the Restriction of the Use of Certain Hazardous Substances in Electrical and Electronic Equipment" on the WTO Trade Technology website, with the regulation number QCVN 2022/BCT.

The Appendix to the Draft Circular lists several categories of electrical and electronic equipment that require RoHS certification, including:

• IT and telecommunications equipment: mainframes, small computers, printers and printing equipment, personal and notebook computers (including CPUs, mice, monitors, and keyboards), notebooks, notepad calculators, photocopiers, electrical and electronic typewriters, pocket and desktop computers, and other electronic collection, storage, processing, Equipment for presenting or communicating information, fax machines, telegraphs, mobile phones, telephones, answering systems and equipment for transmitting sound, images or other information via telecommunications,
• monitoring instruments: smoke detectors, heat regulators, thermostats, other monitoring tools used in industrial installations (e.g. those used in control panels).

The Regulation is expected to come into force on December 1, 2022, and the implementation date reflected in the Regulation is January 1, 2026 (but the WTO website shows that the recommended implementation time is January 1, 2025).

Click on the view the original draft circular.

Vietnam's Ministry of Information and Communications (MIC) issued a draft circular in early 2022 on regulating products with mandatory type approval, certification, and declaration of conformity. On 16 May 2022, the MIC issued Circular 02/2022/TT-BTTTT – Lists of Products and Goods Regulations that may cause uninsecurity under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Information and Communications, which will replace the 01/2021/TT-BTTTT Circular and Circular 11/2020/TT-BTTTT and will come into force on 1 July 2022.

The circular contains a list of certified products and a summary of the regulations. Updates to the Circular include:

• The Other Equipment section has been moved to Annex 2 (Mandatory Declaration of Conformity)
• containing output power limits for LPWAN devices

Click this link to view the original text of the Circular 02/2022/TT-BTTTT.

On April 7, 2022, Vietnam's regulator, the Ministry of Information and Communications (MIC), released a draft regulation QCVN 131:2022/BTTTT promulgating the "National Technical Regulations for NB-IoT Terminals" and solicited public comments on the new regulations. This draft regulation is based on ETSI EN 301 908-1 V15.1.1 (2021-09) and ETSI EN 301 908-13 V13.2.1 (2022).

The deadline for public consultation on the new regulations is June 7, 2022, and feedback can be clicked on this link. The new regulations are expected to come into effect on July 1, 2023.

Click This link looks at QCVN 131:2022/BTTTT.

On December 31, 2021, the Ministry of Information and Communications (MIC) of Viet Nam issued Circular No. 29/2021/TT-BTTTT promulgating the national frequency plan for the 2300 – 2400 MHz band of the IMT mobile network. The announcement announced that Vietnam plans to deploy the 2300-2400 MHz radio frequency band in accordance with the International Mobile Telecommunications Advanced (IMT-Advanced) standard and its successors.

The notification applies to organizations, enterprises and individuals who manufacture, import, trade and use radio equipment in Vietnam. 2300 – 2400 MHz will be split into 3 time division duplex spectrum resource blocks, i.e. A1, A2, A3, each with a width of 30 MHz.

The announcement is effective from February 15, 2022. It removes Article 1, Article 2.2 and the related 2300 – 2400 MHz provision in Circular No. 18/2020/TT-BTTTT dated 20 August 2020.

Click on this link to access the original announcement.