Vietnam’s telecommunication giant Viettel Telecom (VTT) and China-based AI company iFLYTEK have signed a strategic cooperation agreement with to develop voice artificial intelligence (AI) technologies for the Vietnamese market, with a focus on speech processing and localization.

The signing ceremony took place on Thursday in Hefei, during a working visit by Viettel Group to iFLYTEK, according to a release of Viettel Group, the parent firm of Viettel Telecom.

Under the agreement, the two sides will focus on three key areas. First, they will jointly develop Vietnamese-language speech technologies, including speech-to-text (STT) and text-to-speech (TTS). This includes localizing AI models to reflect the specific characteristics of Vietnamese, such as tonal marks, regional accents, and natural speech patterns, while ensuring deployment on Viettel’s infrastructure to maintain data security and sovereignty.

Second, the partnership will involve integrating AI technologies into hardware and end-user devices. Speech recognition and related AI models are expected to be embedded into Viettel’s product ecosystem, including smartphones, IoT devices, smart speakers, and telecom hardware systems, with an emphasis on optimizing performance on low-resource devices through edge computing.

Third, the two companies will expand collaboration into broader AI services. This includes natural language processing, sentiment analysis, real-time translation, and intelligent customer service solutions such as virtual call centers.

Viettel said the agreement marks an initial step toward a long-term strategic relationship, with plans to accelerate research and deployment of AI technologies in Vietnam. The partnership also covers joint research and development and co-creation of new products tailored to the Vietnamese market.

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