Vietnam Internet over times

Vietnam Internet has officially come into operation since 1997 and attracted over 7.5 million users accounting for 9.1 per cent of population. Despite not reaching a perfect success yet, Vietnam Internet has obtained noteworthy achievements.

In 1997, the promulgation of Decree 21/1997/ND-CP created the temporary legal base for Vietnam Internet. At beginning, there was only Vietnam Post and Telecommunications Corp. (VNPT) providing Internet eXchange Point (IXP), and the four Internet service providers (ISP), including VNPT, Financing and Promoting Technology  Company (FPT), Saigon Post and Telecommunications Company (SPT), Netnam - Information Technology Institute which had permission to provide Internet services. After three years, the network infrastructure linked nationwide and people could access Internet through Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) in localities. During that time, services supporting consumers mainly were Internet connection.     

Vietnam Internet achieved the strong development in 2002 when Decree 55/2002/ND-CP about management, providing, exploiting and using Internet replacing Decree 21/1997/ND-CP. The exclusive of IXP was cancelled and the appearance of many IXP increasingly created activeness and competitiveness in the market. ISP of many economic sectors at home and abroad invested in different forms and methods such as input and output services, application services online.     

Since May 2003, the high speed Internet connection ADSL has been provided by the two biggest ISP (VNPT and FPT) and the supply is always failing to meet demands of the local market. Five months later, ADSL subscribers of VNPT and FPT reached 20,000 (accounting for 97 per cent of the market shares) and went up to 71,000 (84 per cent) after one year. VNPT and FPT sometimes have not enough service ports for clients in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. This service has such a potential that ISP- Viettel considers 2005 as the main year to promote ADSL.

Along with the decisions of the Ministry of Post and Telecommunications to decrease Internet accession cost, make telecommunications cost equal or lower than other countries in the area as well as allow enterprises to manage and set the cost level themselves, each ISP’s has raised the own strong position. ISP and OSP have taken interest in application services on Internet and promoted to diversify services for clients. Application services on Internet have become more abundant so far with VOIP, WIFI, public Internet and other online services, for example Video, forum, chat, game online...

The Internet quality has improved evidently. Increasing international Internet bands and the Internet connecting system among home IXP through Vietnam National Internet eXchange (VNIX) eliminate the access to Internet through the main servers outside the country, reducing time consuming, providing against cutting off international channels. Domestic application services such as getting Vietnamese information, video, game online... are popularly applied in the system. In fact, the outbreak of Internet connecting capacity in the country has increased through VNIX.   

ADSL has made Internet protocol (IP) rapidly increase. Although the registered number of IP in the following year is twice comparing with the previous year, the whole IP in the country have only reached 1777 Class C at the end of 2004. Vietnam IP cost in average is lower than most countries in Asia. According to statistics, the registered number of domains of VN (ccTLD) is 10,800 and about 10,000 domains such as gTLD: .com, .net, .org... registered by domestic individuals, organisations and enterprises.   

Until May 2005, the Internet infrastructure linking Vietnam and the World has developed in multi-diversified direction. International Internet bands reached 0.96Kbps per subscriber in 2004. There are 12 international directions over 8 countries which have large Internet capacity including America, Japan, Korea, Singapore, China, Hongkong, Taiwan and Malaysia. 

Internet service providers at present include 4 IXP, 8 ISP, 3 electronic newspapers, 15 OSP and other electronic webs. According to VDC research 4 years before, most Internet clients in Vietnam were foreign enterprises and organisations but are more diversified now with domestic enterprises and organisations, pupils, students and labour. Vietnam will obtain the strong development of Internet within the next 5 years before the stable growth, said Mr. Nguyen Le Thuy, Director of Vietnam Internet Centre- VNPT. 

• Huyen Nhi