Friday, January 17, 2003
More telephones ring in Vietnam in 2002
Reuters Hanoi, January 17
More Vietnamese hooked on to telephones last year, with mobile subscription jumping 50 percent from 2001, state media reported on Friday.
In 2002, the number of Vietnamese who owned a telephone climbed 17.8 percent to 5.57 million, of whom 3.66 million subscribed to fixed lines and the balance to mobile or cellular phones, the Thanh Nien (Young People) newspaper reported.
The communist-ruled country has a population of 80 million, so the number of residents having a fixed line connection is relatively low, with an average of 4.6 phones for every 100 people.
That number compares with 20 fixed line subscribers per 100 people in giant northern neighbour China while in the United States the comparative figure is as high as 70.
Unlisted dominant telecoms firm Vietnam Posts and Telecommunications Corp recorded revenues of 21.5 trillion dong ($1.40 billion) last year, according to the Dau Tu (Investment) newspaper on Friday.
The corporation has forecast revenues rising to 23 billion dong this year. Cyberspace usage also increased. The official Vietnam News Agency said that 142,000 new Internet users were added in 2002, bringing the total number of subscribers in the country to 235,000, while there are around one million net surfers.
But Hanoi is dissatisfied with the progress of Internet expansion. Trade Minister Truong Dinh Tuyen has warned that Vietnam is falling behind other countries because too few companies are using cyberspace for business.
A survey said two percent of Vietnam's 75,000 enterprises use electronic commerce. Half of the companies surveyed by the Vietnam Industrial and Commercial Bank use the Internet for e-mails, but only eight percent obtain information from the Web.
The government plans to invest $16.3 million to develop electronic commerce and aims to provide Internet access to at least five percent of its population by 2005, the Vietnam News daily reported.
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