The main communications markets in Vietnam requiring international bandwidth are internet access, enterprise related communications and voice. Internet access, provided in Vietnam by several competing ISP's, accounts for 75% of the international traffic and is predicted to be by far the biggest driver of bandwidth demand. Vietnam currently has 14.7 million Internet users out of its 85 million population, and a growth of 76% in the 12 months up to June 2006. The use of broadband Internet, with DSL broadband access being introduced in 2003, is growing even faster. After recording over 200% growth during both 2005 and 2006, the number of broadband subscribers reached 500k+ at the end of 2006. The strong broadband demand has been boosted by falling access prices as competition amongst ISP's has increased during 2005 and 2006. However, the penetration levels are still low compared to other Asian markets, and consequently the expected growth rate in broadband subscribers will continue to be high. The demographics in Vietnam also points to a rapid adoption of broadband Internet. The aggregated demand for Internet bandwidth is further leveraged by the increase in bandwidth usage per subscriber (through email and bandwidth hungry applications such as streaming video websites, online gaming, video and file-sharing, etc.).
Starting from a relatively low penetration base Vietnam is also in a unique position to leapfrog technologies for example by:
Going directly to mobile phone usage instead of fixed lines
Move directly to the 3G services currently being deployed and bypassing previous technologies
ADSL and other broadband technologies instead of modem and dialup access
Wireless technologies instead of copper in remote areas rapidly providing telephony and broadband services
Network convergence by soft switching and IP based Next Generation Networks instead of traditional TDM networks and multiple service layers and networks
The MNC Enterprise sector in Vietnam is currently small but growing fast. Traditionally and even today bandwidth for private networks has been so expensive to procure for foreign enterprises leading to most circuits (IPLC, Frame Relay, IPVPN, etc) are of very low bandwidths, most often in sub-rates of E1's. The entire Enterprise sector is likely to grow in volume as Vietnam proceeds with its equitisation and privatisation process and following the countries recent entry into the WTO. These facts coupled with an inevitable decrease in price for Enterprise communication services are likely to generate a much higher demand for international services.
2007 TRICOM Asia Limited. All rights reserved.