Vietnam will pour at least 95,000 billion Vietnamese dong (5.97 billion U.S. dollars) into developing telecommunications networks and building postal and telecommunications infrastructure between 2006 and 2010, local newspaper Vietnam Economic Times reported Friday.

The huge investment is expected to help increase the country's phone density to 56.1 phones per 100 residents in 2010 from 19.9 percent in late 2005 and 26.2 percent in late August 2006. Now, 97. 5 percent of all communes have access to phone services, said the report.

Vietnam had over 13.7 million Internet users, or 16.5 percent of its population, by early this month, compared with the respective figures of 8.1 million and 9.8 percent in early September 2005. Of the 13.7 million users, nearly 3.8 million are subscribers, many of whom use broadband Internet services, the Vietnam Internet Network Information Center told Xinhua recently, noting that the country's total international bandwidth currently stands at 5,795 Mbps.

Source: Xinhua