Vietnam’s Internet Users Soar in 10 Months

Vietnam’s Internet users soar in 10 months

HANOI, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) — Vietnam had roughly 17.9 million Internet users, or 21.2 percent of the country’s population, lastmonth, up from the respective figures of nearly 14.2 million and 17.1 percent in October 2006.

Specifically, Vietnam had over five million Internet subscribers, including nearly 1.2 million broadband Internet subscribers in October, up from 3.9 million last October, the Vietnam Internet Network Information Center told Xinhua on Thursday, noting that the country launched high-speed Internet Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) services in 2003.

There were 54,739 websites registered under the .vn domain by the end of October 2007, up from 31,959 websites by the end of October 2006. Now, 56 out of 64 cities and provinces nationwide have their own websites.

As of late last month, Vietnam’s total international bandwidthstood at 10,508 Mbps, the center said.

According to surveys by the E-Commerce Department under the Vietnamese Ministry of Industry and Trade, the proportion of usinghigh-speed services among enterprises having Internet connections rose to 71.4 percent in 2005 from 54 percent in 2004, and more andmore companies in the country have been conducting transactions via electronic means, especially in the modes of business-to-business (B2B).

Under Vietnam’s Overall Plan on Developing E-commerce in the 2006- 2010 approved by the government in 2005, by 2010, some 60 percent of large firms in the country will conduct B2B e-commerce,80 percent of small and medium enterprises, either B2B or business-to-customer (B2C), and about 10 percent of households either B2C or C2C (consumer-to-consumer).

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