Vietnam has opened up its data center market to foreign investors, allowing 100% ownership, following the implementation of controversial data storage regulations. This development is expected to attract major industry players like Amazon.com Inc.’s (NASDAQ:AMZN) Amazon Web Services and Keppel.
What Happened: Vietnam’s new law on telecommunications, which came into effect last week, removes any foreign ownership restrictions for data and cloud providers, reported Nikkei. This is a significant departure from the 49% foreign ownership cap in other sectors.
Additionally, the law offers these providers an “unprecedented exception” from licensing, effectively exempting them from the usual market entry constraints, according to law firm VDB Loi. This change is largely attributed to other regulations, such as the Cybersecurity Law, which mandates companies to store data within Vietnam.
Despite opposition from major tech companies like Meta Platforms Inc.’s (NASDAQ:META) Facebook and Google parent company Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL), the Vietnamese government ...