Twenty years ago, on November 19, 1997 Vietnam officially connected to the Internet, marking an important milestone in the history of the Vietnamese information and communication industry.
Minister of Information and Communications Truong Minh Tuan said on the 2017 Internet Day that to ensure the continued development of the Internet in the country, the outgrowth of telecommunication and information technology infrastructure must be acknowledged.
Starting with nothing in the early 1990s, Vietnam has been known for its early deployment of 2G networks and continued spread of 3G and 4G, with modern telecommunication and Internet infrastructure; quickly, it covers the nation from cities to rural areas, mountainous provinces to the islands, said the minister.
According to a statistic report conducted in early 2017, Vietnam had over 50 million internet users, accounting for 54 per cent of the population, higher than the global average at 46.64 per cent. It is listed among countries with the highest number of Internet users in Asia.
In comparison with the previous years, the country has made impressive progress. For instance, there were more than 31 million users in 2012 or 17 million in 10 years before 2012 and 205,000 people on the early days of the Internet in the country, the Minister said.
During 20 years, it was happy to say that Internet infrastructure businesses and many big digital content companies have reached out to the world yet they rae facing many difficulties ahead.
General manager of VNG Company Le Hong Minh said that Vietnamese internet enterprises were still lag far behind their peers in the world. Once, pouring investment in foreign countries, Vietnamese enterprises will surely encounter competition with digital content giant corporations; hopefully, they can succeed because of the big Internet market.
Nowadays, it must say about smart city, service, electronic payment and something which will be applicable in the future, he added.
Today, the world has been entering the era that every sector and field is not separated from internet and hi-tech; especially, Vietnam is entering the Fourth Industrial Revolution, or Industry 4.0 when the ability of machines, devices, sensors, and people to connect and communicate with each other via the Internet of Things (IoT) or the Internet of People (IoP) or the country will lag behind other nations.
To achieve this, Vietnam needs to focus on developing IT, telecommunication, internet, and digital content infrastructure to join with the world, said Minister Tuan. In the near future, the government should adopt more preferential policies and measures to assist Vietnamese enterprises to step in the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
He strongly believed that with good infrastructure and abundant human resources in the fieldof Internet devopment, Vietnam can be an internet developed country.
