Internet News ...
Internet poised to become major international link.Over 2,000 individuals share this line of thought and units already registered to use the Internet services in Vietnam.
Three months after Vietnam officially networked with the global Internet (November 19 1997) and the first Internet service in Vietnam went into operation on December 1st 1997, and now up to February 1998, the number of persons registered to use the Internet has risen over 2,500.
The Vietnam Datacommunication Company (VDC) under the General Department of Post and Telecommunications, one of the four Internet Service Providers in the country, has topped the list with 2,115 customers from 12 provinces and cities nation-wide having registered to get hook on to the Internet through their local post office systems. About 1,000 of these customers are in HCM City and nearly 600 in Hanoi. Two other ISP's - Sai Gon Postal and FPT (The Corporation for Financing and promoting Technology) are still preparing their equipment to begin their service. Netnam of the Information Technology Institute has over 300 customers. In actuality, the number of users of Internet should be much greater than the above figure, because a lot of agencies, departments and institutes have registered only one account for many users.
Over 40 per cent of Internet users are foreign individuals and international offices. About 30 per cent of the customers are individual private customers or private companies with different objectives. The most difficult thing for Vietnamese surfers is using information and services on the net when most of it is in English. The high charges compared to international rates are one more problem. The subscriber's charge is 50,000 dong per month, the charge for one-minute access to the net is
400 dong plus 65 dong as a surcharge for one minute of using the telephone. A subscriber would pay US$90 per month if they used the Internet for one hour a day.
The agencies concerned do not yet have specific and standardized stipulations for Domain names and Internet Protocol, and the transmitting speed is still slow and
unstable. In recent time ISP's have operated to their maximum capacities in an effort to attract customers. The VDC and other ISP's have three big service centers in Hanoi, Danang, and Ho Chi Minh City at present, and have expanded their services by establishing the Value Added Service Center (VASC) with the function of building and managing the Vietnam Network, constructing data banks, providing consumer information and guiding the users of Internet.
VASC was successful in creating the first electronic exchange forum between the users of Internet Vietnam and the world with the establishment of the Cyber Club on the VNN1 Net, and the Football Club on the VNN2 Net with the registration of 500 persons, including a lot of the Vietnamese working and studying abroad. Nguyen Anh Tuan, Director of VASC, said that this is the first step to integrate into the world and at the same time create a forum for the development of informatics in Vietnam.
His competitor FPT is now actively developing its services through the nation-wide "Tri Tue Vietnam" (Vietnam's Intelligence) net. Many ISP managers have thought about the supply of tree services such as Email or Virtual Gift in order to strengthen its attractiveness to the customers. ISP services have now been expedited to build the infrastructure for other operations such as an information bank to provide data for users.
Global Directions Incorporated. 116 Maiden Lane, San Francisco, California 94108, USA. email: gdisf@aol.com - April 1998.
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