Vietnam Ties Marketing Calls to Verified IDs

The scale of the problem helps explain why regulators are acting now. Over the 2020-2025 period, authorities said more than 1.7 million subscribers reported spam-like messages or calls, telecom firms flagged more than 30.8 million suspicious subscribers, and more than 3.1 million were blocked two ways. Regulators also reviewed 40 businesses linked to brandname abuse and found 32 violations, while 548,064 subscriptions were withdrawn. The ministry said the country had seen more than 4,200 cybercrime cases by October 2025, causing losses of nearly 5,000 billion dong, underscoring that scam calling has become part of a wider digital crime economy.

The proposal would replace Decree 91/2020 and move enforcement toward a more centralized, data-driven system. It sets out criteria to detect spam based on sending frequency, call patterns, user complaints, shared content templates and technical risk indicators. Telecom and internet providers would have to build systems to block, label and process complaints, while advertisers would be required to use accurate identifiers and disclose the real party behind paid or promotional calls. That is a clear sign the government wants to make telecom networks accountable gatekeepers rather than passive carriers.

For investors, the first-order impact is on compliance costs, but the second-order effect is more interesting. Companies that rely on SMS Brandname, SIP Trunk, VoIP and outbound calling for customer acquisition will face tighter scrutiny, which should compress low-quality lead generation and raise the value of verified communication channels. That is constructive for established telecom groups with strong enterprise relationships and network-scale compliance tools, while it is negative for smaller brokers, shell operators and any business model dependent on opaque outreach. In the US, the policy also highlights why investors continue to favor carriers and network infrastructure names such as Verizon, T-Mobile US and AT&T when regulators around the world turn communications trust into a new pricing lever.

The bigger story is that digital identity is becoming infrastructure. As governments from Asia to the West push harder against fraud, the winners are likely to be the platforms that can authenticate traffic, secure voice and messaging, and prove who is on the other end of the line. This is not just about stopping spam calls in Vietnam; it is another step toward a global regime where verified communications become the default, and that is a long-duration tailwind for compliant telecoms, cybersecurity and identity infrastructure providers.