Vietnam

ADOC Success Stories: Helping Abused Women to Rebuild Their Lives

Hoa is a young girl born in a poor village in the mountainous district of Thanh Hoa, Vietnam. In order to bring some extra money to their families, young men and women at this village search for jobs at farms across the border. With this idea in mind, Hoa left her village early one morning in 2007. But at her young and innocent age, despite her noble intentions, her adventure turned sour, and like so many others girls she was deceived and sold as a prostitute.

After a period of intense family care and long hours of counseling at the Center for Women and Development, Hoa slowly started to rebuild her ability to interact and regain trust in other people. At the center, she also learnt about the AEPC Digital Opportunity Center and the training programs they offered. Hoa’s determination knew no boundaries, and despite this shameful setback, she never forgot her goal of helping her parents. In her eyes, the ADOC 2.0 project could help her achieve this goal, so without a second thought, she joined the computer training program.

During four long months, Hoa studied and trained at the AEPC Digital Opportunity Center. She learnt how a computer works, the basics of the operating system, and how to use the internet together with the most popular applications. She then learnt to draft documents on a word processor, and how to work with spreadsheets. Seeing that she was a hard worker, the center issued a job recommendation for her upon completion of the course.

Thanks to her new skills, strong determination and the support provided by the Center for Women’s Development and AEPC Digital Opportunity Center, Hoa soon landed a staff position at a company where she was hired for her newly acquired skills. The road to a better life may have cost Hoa her innocence, but her determination finally paid off. With her salary, Hoa is now able to live a comfortable life, but most importantly, she is also able to send some money to help her family back in her village.

ADOC Success Stories: Providing Self-Confidence to an Army Veteran

My name is Dang Dam Tuan, and I am a veteran soldier who served in the Vietnam People’s Army. I devoted my youth to the people of Vietnam and to my country. My unit was stationed away from home, so I could spend very little time with my family. To make up for it, since being discharged, I now spend most of my time caring for my family. I have 2 beautiful grandchildren, one in 9^th grade and the other in 5^th grade. They are both well mannered and are doing well in school, and for this I am grateful.

Some months ago, my wife bought a computer to help our grandchildren learn. Being children, it wasn’t long before they managed to crash it. My wife then came to me and asked me to fix it. At that point I realized that I knew nothing about computers. In this era of information technology, computers and the internet have become extremely necessary in all aspects of life, and even children are taught about ICT at an early age, but sadly I was out of the loop.

Full of frustration, I asked friends and relatives if they knew where I could learn computer skills. Luckily, I didn’t have to search too long. One relative told me to go to the APEC Digital Opportunity Center, so I paid a visit. I was impressed with their clean facilities, modern computers and internet access. I enrolled in their computer training program that same day. The teachers were so enthusiastic and reassured me that I would soon know all about computers. After only three months of study at the APEC Digital Opportunity Center, I learnt the basics about computers, such as how to install and configure the operating system and application programs, how to use MS Office, but most importantly, I learnt to use the internet to assist my grandchildren in doing homework.

Thanks to the ADOC 2.0 project, I have confidence in fixing our home computer whenever our children break it or there are any errors. I no longer fear this new technology and have found a way to bond with my grandchildren, compensating for all those years I was away from them. ADOC 2.0 has helped improve my parenting skills.

Internet speed unimproved owing to the lack of content

Though Internet service providers have been increasing the bandwidth continuously, Vietnam’s Internet speed on Akamai’s ranking has been staying at approximately 1.7 Mbps.

The problem has been explained by Internet experts that content services being provided in Vietnam are mostly basic services, while there has been no service that needs large bandwidth.

No progress made after one year

The Q2 2010 report on the global Internet speed by Akamai, a network specializing in providing Internet content in the US, showed that the Internet speed in Vietnam was 1.7 Mbps, lower than the 1.8 Mbps level in the world. With the result, Vietnam ranked the 32nd among the 50 surveyed countries in terms of Internet speed.

In South East Asia, Vietnam ranked behind Thailand (2.9 Mbps), Singapore (3.1 Mbps), and above Malaysia (1.19 Mbps), the Philippines (0.9 Mbps), and Indonesia (0.63 Mbps). In Vietnam, 70 percent of Internet connections have the speed of 256 Kbps – 2 Mbps, while only two percent reportedly had the connection speed above 5 Mbps.

Akamai’s Internet speed report in Q4 2011 showed that Vietnam had the average speed of 1.664 Mbps, lower than the average level of 2.3 Mbps in the world. Thirteen percent of Internet connections had the speed lower than 256 Kbps, 2 percent had the speed higher than 5 Mbps. In the 11-country ASEAN bloc, Vietnam ranked behind Thailand (3.054 Mbps), Malaysia (1.8 Mbps) and Singapore (4.6 Mbps).

As such, Vietnam’s Internet speed has not seen any improvement after one year, staying at 1.7 Mbps.

Meanwhile, according to NetIndex, the download speed of Vietnam’s Internet is at 8.04 Mbps, ranking the 54th among 180 countries in the world, and the upload speed is 5.57 Mbps, ranking the 28th.

The report has pointed out that Ben Tre is the province which has the fastest download speed, at 17.38 Mbps, followed by Buon Ma Thuot 14.91 Mbsp and Vinh City 12.82 Mbps.

If comparing with October 2011, the download speed in Vietnam on Speedtest has also decreased from 9.79 Mbps to 8.04 Mbps.

Meanwhile, in 2011, Vietnamese Internet service providers continuously increased the bandwidth or slash fees to satisfy the customers’ demand.

In early March 2011, FPT Telecom announced it raised the access speed to 8 Mbps at maximum, and exempted the iTV service fee. In early May 2011, VDC, a subsidiary of the giant Vietnam Post and Telecommunication Group raised the bandwidth of MegaVNN service packages, while the package fee remained unchanged.

Developing content to stimulate Internet speed

An executive of VDC said that the unchanged Internet speed in Vietnam shows that the speed has reached the threshold which can satisfy users’ demand. Therefore, after a period of focusing on developing infrastructure items, it’s now the time to pay attention to the development of the content services, in order to increase the demand for large bandwidth.

Experts said that all basic services, which have been in high demand, such as reading news, searching information or listening to music, now absolutely can be satisfied by ADSL packages. Therefore, in order to raise Vietnam’s Internet speed, enterprises should think of developing content on large bandwidth infrastructure.

“We have had large roads (large bandwidth), and now we need to have vehicles (services) to run on the large roads,” an expert said.

Deputy Chair of the Vietnam Internet Association Nguyen Long has also admitted that there are few content products on Internet, except amusement services and games. Other content services have not developed due to the problems relating to the intellectual property rights.

Thu Uyen

New Internet policy aimed at socio-economic growth

Le Nam Thang, deputy minister of Information and Communications, said Vietnam is developing a new Internet policy to replace the old one, keeping in mind the current situation in the country, and exploring the advantages of the Internet, curbing misuse and focused on socio-economic growth.

The deputy minister stated this at a meeting to discuss ‘Influence of Internet on the country’s economic growth’ organised by the Vietnam Club of Information Technology Journalists with participation of leaders of the Ministry of Information and Communications, Vietnam’s Internet Association and international IT corporations such as Google, Intel and other domestic enterprises.

At the meeting, the US-based McKinsey & Company released its survey report ‘Online and upcoming: Internet impact on developing countries.’

The Internet contributes to 9 per cent of Vietnam’s gross domestic product (GDP), which is the same as Turkey and Morocco, according to a recent global survey.

The contribution is driven by private consumption of Internet-related products such as broadband and mobile Internet spending, cited the survey.

Private consumption accounts for some 2 per cent of Vietnam’s GDP but is offset by the country’s large trade deficit in Internet-related goods and services.

The survey also pointed out that the GDP contribution of the Internet in Vietnam is still lower than the two per cent average for nine developing countries that the company studied in detail.

However, Shaowei Ying, associate principal in McKinsey’s Singapore office, told at the seminar that the contribution will soon catch up with the average rate and probably be able to reach 2.5 per cent in the near future.

On the other hand, McKinsey’s survey found that e-commerce in Vietnam is still an untapped market with high potential for growth. Shaowei Ying announced that business effectiveness of small and medium enterprises has increased by 19.3 per cent thanks to utilization of Internet.

It said more than one-third of Internet users have visited an online shopping or auction site. Meanwhile, in another survey, 50 per cent of Internet users said they believed that shopping online provides access to a wider range of products.

Moreover, Vietnam’s foundations for e-commerce activity are low in comparison with more developed countries and regional averages, due to low online payment enablement, McKinsey said in the survey.

Vietnam has 30 million Internet users in Vietnam, accounting for 31 per cent of the population. The blooming growth of telecommunications and Information technology in the country has brought hopes of a breakthrough for Vietnam’s economy.

Ann Lavin, Head of the Public Policy and Government Affairs, Southeast Asia at Google Asia Pacific, said the real strength of internet in developing economy is in small and medium enterprises. She added that Google will have a discussion with Vietnam to assist such enterprises to participate in international markets.

Vuong Quang Khai, director of VNG, said during the past 10 years, digital content increased by over 50 per cent, a favourite condition to develop the digital content industry, as more and more subscribers have paid to access or download digital content.

However, it needs an appropriate policy to manage it or else it will fall in the control of foreign countries and affect national security, Khai said.