“What is the Internet?”

The road to Lung Cu commune of Ha Giang is very cool in the summer. Only experienced drivers can safely drive through sloppy, zigzagging mountain roads, which are wrapped in white fog, preventing the driver’s vision beyond ten meters.

The Lung Cu border guard station is the “headquarters” for three networked computers, the commune’s “gate to the world”. Sometimes, a border guard turns on the computer and clicks to read the news.

Giang A Su, 25, a H’Mong man who was holding a cock at the Lung Cu market, naturally answered “No, I don’t know!” when he was asked if he knows what Internet is.

Not only for A Su but for most of ethnic minority people in Lung Cu plateau, computers and Internet are very strange.

Lung Cu was connected to the Internet early in 2008. The path from Dong Van town to Lung Cu is 25km down the sloping, zigzag road so workers of the Ha Giang province branch of the Vietnam Post and Telecommunications Group (VNPT) had to work hard many days to bring telecom cable to Lung Cu.

“That was a difficult job but we were determined to do it, to improve the cultural standard for the local people,” said VNPT Ha Giang director Nguyen Van Bac.

The first day that the border guards at Lung Cu border station instructed some H’Mong young people to access to the Internet, the youths stared with fascination as the mouse arrow moved across the screen. A boy didn’t dare to hold the mouse, so a border guard gently placed his hand on the boy’s, guiding him how to use the equipment.

The three networked computers sit there quietly and rarely used, mainly by border guards or teachers from a near-by primary school. Since the border guard must pay fees to the Internet service provider, the border station collects charges of 3000 dong per hour. The charge is another obstacle to Internet use by the local minority people.

Even teacher Nguyen Thi Hau, vice principal at the Lung Cu Primary School, said that she can only afford to access to the Internet for several hours a week to visit the website of the Ministry of Education and Training and some news sites.

To go to Lung Cu border station to use the computers, people from the nearest village have to walk for nearly two hours. Giang A Su said that it takes him half a day to go from his village, San Sa Phin, to the border station.

Over one year after Internet went to Lung Cu, the Lung Cu border station’s senior Lieutenant Colonel Nguyen Hai Ly said that the biggest benefit from it is his solders can read the internal bulletin of the border guard forces, the security and defence situation in the border and islands of Vietnam.

The goal of Internet connection

At this moment, the Internet network extends as far as the centres of provinces and districts in Vietnam and into some communes. Under the public telecom development scheme that has been implemented since 2007, the Internet has reached more than 40 percent of the communes in Ha Giang.

Ha Giang province aims to bring the Internet to 100 percent of its border communes and 50 percent of the total by 2010. This plan is supported not only by the State-owned VNPT group but also other telecom companies like Viettel, EVN Telecom and FPT.

“Viettel is building a wireless network in Ha Giang but ethnic minority people so far have hardly any access to the Internet,” said Ha Giang Department of Information and Communications’ director Pham Ma Hung. According to Hung, to really bring Internet to local people, the province has to improve their living standards first.

According to ‘Plan,’ an international NGO, Ha Giang is the third poorest province in Vietnam, after Bac Kan and Dak Nong. Per capita income there is 3.2 million dong (US$180) per year.  The few well-off families mainly live in towns. Ha Giang has the highest number of poor districts in Vietnam, six out of eleven districts, totaling nearly 7000 needy households.

Farmers who live in remote and isolated areas in Ha Giang have extremely low cash incomes, about 2.5 million dong per year.  When, each day, a person earns about 7000 dong, paying 3000 dong for an hour on the Internet is impossible.

Vu Hoang Lien, director of the Vietnam Data and Communications (VDC), the state-owned firm that is in charge of bringing Internet connection to Ha Giang, said that Internet service providers must slash Internet charges to the minimum level or even provide it free of charge so the mountain dwellers in Ha Giang, nearly 90 percent of its population, can access the Internet.

“We have to show the local people benefits they can get from the Internet, such as information about new plant varieties or animal husbandry or healthy entertainment forms,” Lien said.

The plan to bring Internet to Ha Giang looks very far from realization, but the province’s vice chairman Trinh Duy Quyen boasted that in Hoang Su Phi commune, 385 out of 500 families have mobile phones.

Quyen said these people use mobile phones for communications and business. “If Internet coverage comes to Ha Giang, I’m sure that economic activity and the spiritual life of local people will both be heightened,” Quyen hoped.

The Government’s assistance

The case of Ha Giang is typical of other mountainous provinces.

The Vietnamese government began implementing a public telecom service programme in disadvantaged areas in 2007. This programme mobilizes telecom firms to provide basic telecom services to these areas. The target areas include 180 districts in 51 provinces and 583 remote and isolated communes in Vietnam.

To implement this policy, telecom companies pay a certain percentage of their annual revenue to the government’s public telecom fund. For example, in 2007, telecom companies paid 5 percent of their mobile revenues, 4 percent of international fixed phone revenues and 3 percent of their inter-provincial fixed phone turnover to this fund. The public telecom fund has chartered capital of 500 billion dong (US$27.7 million), plus 1 trillion dong ($55.5 million) from the contribution of telecom companies.

In 2007, the Ministry of Telecommunications and Communications assigned four companies, VNPT, Viettel, Saigon Postel and EVN Telecom to develop public telecom services. Preferential policies encourage these firms. The Government’s soft loans enable them to develop the networks and provide non-refundable capital to maintain services in these areas.

In 2008, the Ministry paid more than 1.2 trillion (US$66.7 million) to the four companies to develop 14 fundamental telecom services in the disadvantaged area, focusing on public telecom stations in remote and mountainous communes, border stations and islands.

According to the Ministry, at the end of 2008, telephone density in disadvantaged areas is 8.3 phones per 100 residents, a big jump from 2.5 phones per 100 residents in late 2004. The Internet penetration rose 1000%, but there is still only one networked computer per 500 residents.

The Ministry’s 2010 goal is that disadvantaged areas will have at least five fixed phone lines per 100 residents, 100 percent of communes will have public post and telecom stations and 70 percent of the communes will have public Internet spots.

VietNamNet/TBKTVN