More Vietnamese enterprises have high-speed Internet connections

Over 92 percent of surveyed firms in Vietnam currently have Internet connections, 81 percent of them use broadband services, a local trade agency said Thursday.

According to surveys by the E-Commerce Department under the Trade Ministry, the proportion of using high-speed services among enterprises having Internet connections was 71.4 percent in 2005 and 54 percent in 2004, the department said, noting that more and more companies in Vietnam 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).

Vietnam had a total of over 14.5 million Internet users, or 17. 5 percent of its population, by early December 2006, compared with the respective figures of 9.9 million and 12 percent in early December 2005.

Of the 14.5 million Internet users, over 4 million are subscribers, including 454,000 broadband ones, the Vietnam Internet Network Information Center told Xinhua recently, noting that the country's total international bandwidth currently stands at 6,325 Mbps.

Source: Xinhua