 Viet Nam's admission to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) will facilitate access to telecommunications and information technology for people in rural areas.
"WTO accession will open up a playground with severe competition among IT and telecom investors, making tem search for new markets and expand services to rural mountainous areas in Viet Nam," Vinh said.
Six years ago, Viet Nam had only one IT and telecom business, VNPT. After entering the WTO, it now has eight suppliers of communication and information technology services and hundreds of suppliers of other services to cover the country.
Regarding rural areas, Viet Nam has a pilot project on application of ViMAX broadband wireless technology to provide IT services in the northern mountainous province of Lao Cai. The project, implemented by the Informatics and Data Transmission Company, Intel group and the US Agency for International Development in Viet Nam, aims to create chances for local people to access the VolP telephone service and help provide Internet service for schools, medical stations, vocational training centres and small businesses in the locality.
VNPT has also begun a project on Internet service for remote and isolated areas with a total investment of 200 million USD. With this project, VNPT expects to bring Internet benefits to ethnic group inhabited areas by 2008.
Sharing the same view with Vinh, Oliver, a member of the administering board of the European Commission Chamber of Commerce, expressed his belief that telecommunications infrastructure projects, particularly those in rural and mountainous areas, would become more attractive to foreign investors as Viet Nam joins the WTO.
Businesses operating in telecommunications and information technology (IT) have made concerted efforts over the past years to provide better access to IT for residents in rural and mountainous areas in conformity with the country's roadmap to join the WTO. All communes nationwide already have been linked to the telephone network.
Particularly, the mobile phone network has been extended to most of the mountainous, far-flung, border areas and islands across the country in addition to 8,000 post office built in various communes, according to Vinh.
The past few years witnessed the application of IT to education and training in mountainous provinces like Bac Giang and Hoa Binh. This initiative has proved its effectiveness in updating pupils of impoverished regions on essential information in service of their studies, according to Nguyen Thi Loi, Director of the provincial Department of Education and Training of Hoa Binh.
However, in order to bridge the digital gap still existing between urban and rural areas, Russel Pipe, director of the e-government project of the Asian Institute of Kenan said, it is a must for the government of Viet Nam to go on with investment in upgrading IT infrastructure for disadvantaged regions.
He also pointed out the need to build telecommunications centres in rural and remote areas, creating favourable conditions for local residents to get access to Internet services.
(Source: VNA)
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