Status on New Vietnamese Safety Requirements for ITC Equipment

                                                                                                                                                                                       

The Vietnam Ministry for Information & Communication (MIC) did in May this year publish the Circular 04/2023/TT-BTTTT, with effect from 15 July. It includes the list of IT- and communication equipment that from 1 January 2024 must comply with the new national regulation/standard QCVN 132:2022/BTTTT on electrical safety for telecommunications and information technology terminal equipment, such as desktop PCs, notebooks/laptops, and tablets, TV decoders, TV receivers, cable TV amplifiers and cordless phones.

The QCVN 132 is based on but is modified from the international standard IEC 62368-1:2018, including the main requirements for electrical safety and some requirements for physical safety (durability) such as impact testing and free fall testing. It replaces the former standard QCVN 22:2010/BTTTT.

Documentation to show compliance can be either by test reports from a MIC-designated laboratory within Vietnam or by test reports from a MIC-designated laboratory in a country having a mutual recognition agreement (MRA) with Vietnam. 
To date, Nemko USA in San Diego remains the only designated laboratory to issue test reports according to QCVN 132: 2022/BTTTT, based on the accreditation as required per the MRA between the US and Vietnam.

The MIC Circular in full is available at this link.

Recently, however, a Circular No. 10/2023/TT-BTTTT, MIC announced the temporary suspension of the application of some of the requirements announced in Circular No. 04/2023/TT-BTTTT, as follows:

• The technical QCVN standards for 5G terminal devices, 5G phones, 5G base stations; until December 31, 2023.
• Enforcement of the QCVN standards’ emission requirements to equipment for maritime use; until June 30, 2024.
• Enforcement of the QCVN standards’ requirements for partial testing under extreme conditions for 2G/3G/4G terminals and phones, RFID at 13.56 MHz, etc., until June 30, 2024

The suspension is due to a lack of local lab test capabilities and so far, no foreign testing labs have been recognized under the MRA program for those tests.

A blog with more complete information is available here.

For further information and/or application for testing to the new Vietnamese standard, please contact Vanessa.Wen@nemko.com or Tom.Tidwell@nemko.com

(The article is based on the info provided by Vanessa Wen and edited by T.Sollie)