Tieng Viet lovers club

[jackbl]

VN encounter same thing as we hv with Mio and Starhub

Sport broadcast right controversies
============================================

VietNamNet Bridge – While the controversy over K+ doesn’t cease, the public is upset by the information that a private firm - AVG - has held the broadcast right of the national football championship V-League for 20 years.

The race among television broadcasters is said to push up the copyright fees, resulting in higher fees for football fans.

It is reported that AVG has reached an agreement with the Vietnam Football Federation (VFF) on holding the exclusive broadcast right of the V-League for the next two decades. This firm is negotiating with other sports federations to purchase the broadcast right of other sport events.

AVG’s move attracts public attention because this is the first time other kinds of sports, not only football – most popular in Vietnam – is in question.

According to information from the AFF, AVG will pay VND6 billion dong ($300,000) annually, doubling the pay from the national Vietnam Television (VTV) or VTC. In addition, the pay will rise by 10 percent yearly, plus 20 percent from advertising profit.

Some VFF officials also said that it is more comfortable to cooperate with AVG than VTV, which often expressed a “haughty” attitude.

With these factors, it seems that AVG is much better partner than VTV or VTC.

However, fans worry that AVG may be the second K+.

Though AVG stated that it would allow other broadcasters like VTV, VTC, HTV, etc. to broadcast V-League without “earning profit” but it has to pay billion dong of copyright fees to V-League, so it will have to seek money from broadcasting V-League.

“Commercializing entertaining TV channels is an indispensable trend of modern media. This is a good sign because once competition among broadcasters is fiercer, they will have to try to better serve the audience,” analyzed Dr. Nguyen Van Dung from the Institute for Press and Broadcasting.

Dr. Do Thu Hang, also from the Institute for Press and Broadcasting, warned broadcasters to not only be after profit and neglect low-income audience, otherwise they will be boycotted.

She said that the government should have specific regulations on information supply for the media and giving priority to national broadcasters in purchasing the broadcast right of national events.



The lesson from Singapore

Early this year, the Singaporean media market experienced an unprecedented situation.

The two largest TV broadcasters SingTel and StarHub announced that Singaporeans might have to watch the World Cup 2010 in Malaysia because they couldn’t afford to buy the broadcast right from the FIFA.

The reason was that they competed to buy the broadcast right, which pushed up the copyright fees to a very high level.

Hundreds of people demonstrated to boycott the two broadcasters. This was a rare demonstration in this country. Nearly 30,000 people joined a campaign on Facebook which called the audience to boycott the two channels because their competition made the fees for watching the World Cup seven times higher than that in 2006.

The Singaporean authorities immediately banned the exclusive broadcast right of all sport tournaments and told the two broadcasters to cooperate with each other to serve the people.

Finally, SingTel and StarHub had to pay only $15 million to FIFA to air the World Cup on both channels. The price was equivalent to the half of the initial price.

Earlier, the two broadcasters’ race for the English Premier League broadcast right turned Singapore into the most expensive country for watching football.

Singaporean Minister of Information, Communications and Art Lui Tuck Yew admitted that the theory “the market will self regulate” is wrong in this case.

Vietnam’s media management agencies should learn from Singapore to prevent losses for the audience.

Lan Huong

[jackbl]

Vietnam Internet idol
========================================
VietNamNet Bridge - The Internet limelight has become Vietnam’s fastest route to fame. No one here is making a Justin Bieber-sized living off of their online stardom, but people are developing careers.

This new celebrity niche is filled with two kinds of stars.

There are the sexy teen singers who have been sucked into a growing online media machine, and freelance talents, who are winning fans with their own home-grown talent.


Fame fatale

Local teen singers usually launch their careers by whipping up a fan base on social networking sites (everything from YouTube to Zing). The savvier among them leverage the attention into promotional contracts and even careers.

Indeed, Vietnam is now home to those who exclusively publish and manage online artists.

Despite the emergence of middlemen, Khanh Hung, a reporter from Yeah1! entertainment magazine says that Internet fame here is still easy-come, easy-go. He cited Elly Tran as a leading example of the new trend.

“A few photos emerged showing [Elly’s] sensual curves and she shot into instant limelight,” says Hung.

“Despite her superficial appeal, she is well-known not only in Vietnam but also in China and Korea. Now she has become an actress, model and expects to be considered a real ‘artist’,” he said

For Hung, Tran’s “career” has not been particularly praiseworthy.

“But it is obviously effective,” he said.

Hung argues that the current army of teen stars actually prefer Internet fame to developing skills or talent.

These so-called stars woo teenagers with their good figures and puppy love songs. They usually start by being rated as “hot” by online gawkers.

Before long, they land contracts with websites who produce their music.

They also get managers who help handle their images and make sure their sites provide new constant content - pictures, daily news and new songs.

What goes up, must come down These stars are also easy prey for scandals.

Truong Quynh Anh, 21, started releasing online songs last year.

Before long, she had entered into contract with pop-star turned manager Thanh Thao. Anh was Thao’s first find.

Thao, 33, has made a career of plucking tender flowers off the internet and promoting them. Her company now manages five exclusive singers.

When Anh broke up with Thao to pursue her own singing career, rumor spread that Thao hounded the girl and her family in an effort to prevent her career from taking off.

Thao denied the rumors and alleged that Anh’s new manager had instigated the scandal to grab headlines.

In any case, it’s clear from the kerfuffle that Quynh Anh had crossed from the semi-anonymous innocence of internet stardom to the sordid world of television and music.


Making the jump

There are those who don’t merely rely on looks to draw the attention of internet fans.

Don Nguyen, whose real name is Nguyen Duc Chung, has studied business in the US for six years. During his time abroad, he never tired of following the misadventures of the country’s colorful pop icons.

Before long, he was dressing in wigs, and mimicking the stars on a webcam in his room. Nguyen spent his free time mimicking his favorite performers, thousands of miles from home. His YouTube posts attracted hundreds of thousand page-views and he has since become a popular Internet comic.

At first, Nguyen claimed the clips were just something he did in his spare time. But, when he returned home, last year, his pastime became a career.

Thanh Loc, a celebrated Vietnamese theatrical performer, had been parroted by Nguyen in a bawdy 30-minute imitation.

The actor sought out his mimic and the two released an online comedy clip together that went viral. Nguyen found himself fielding major media offers. He took a role in a TV series and his career took off.

Henry Hieu, a friend of Loc’s, says Don Nguyen has a gift, but he still needs more time to be challenged and trained.

“Making people laugh by imitating others cannot be called art, it is just a skill,” Hieu says. “Don Nguyen has to create his own work. Otherwise, he will just be considered a copycat and may quickly fade away.”

Despite the criticism, Nguyen says the internet provided him with a chance to pursue his passion.



Young, gifted and hot

After posting homemade cover-song clips on YouTube early this year, seventeen year-old Thai Trinh has become the toast of Ho Chi Minh City.

Netizens went wild for the cute girl’s voice and guitar skills.

Now, she can be seen playing at coffee lounges and bars all over town. The self-taught guitar player is a regular performer at Coocku Nest Cafe on Ho Xuan Huong Street.

Trinh, says she’s still shocked with by her sudden fame. Singing is her passion, but she’s trying to balance all the attention with her studies.

Doan Trang, a Vietnamese student studying in Australia became a big fan of Trinh by watching her online. While visiting home, she’s managed to catch a few of her shows.

For Trang, the girl is proof that “the gap between the online world and reality could be bridged by real talented people,” she said. “Fame can be anyone’s."


Source: Thanh Nien

[jackbl]

Ha Long Bay, Con Dao Islands among best tourist destinations
================================================== ======
Ha Long Bay of Vietnam has been listed among the world’s ten most outstanding tourist destinations by Lonely Planet Magazine.
Two of Vietnam’s coastal destinations have been listed among the world’s ten most outstanding tourist destinations by Lonely Planet Magazine, according to the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism (VNAT).

Ha Long Bay, in the northern province of Quang Ninh, has made it onto the list of the 10 most outstanding coastal destinations.

About 500 ships ply the waters of Ha Long Bay, designated as the World Heritage site in 1994, carrying millions of tourists every year, according to the VNAT.

Quang Ninh has attracted 5.3 million visitors so far this year, 2.5 million of whom visited Ha Long Bay.

The other nine locations were the Norwegian Fjords, the Amazon River, the Franklin River in Australia, the Quetico

Provincial Park in Canada, the Kerala backwaters in India, New Zealand's Milford Sound Bay, the Greek islands, Disco Bay in Greenland, and the Galapagos Archipelago off the coast of Ecuador.

Con Dao Islands, an archipelago off the coast of Ba Ria-Vung Tau Province, was listed in the top 10 most mysterious and outstanding islands in the world for an ideal holiday.

The island was featured for its unspoiled beaches and dark history as a site for inhumane prisons – often known as the Alcatraz of Southeast Asia.

The list includes Socotra off the coast of Yemen, Australia’s Torres, Yaeyama from Japan, Iles du Salut of Guyana, Ulleungdo from Korea, San Blas Islands from Panama, Taiwan’s Penghu; Bay and Hog Islands of Honduras and Uganda’s Ssese.

Source: Agencies

[jackbl]

Many from SBF

Vietnam twinkles in foreign visitors
========================================

VietNamNet Bridge - Vietnam’s tourism industry is witnessing its golden age.

Vietnam is emerging as one of the top tourism spots for visitors from Thailand, Australia, Japan and Singapore for their next vacations, according to a recent tourism survey conducted by Visa, a global payments technology company, and the Pacific Asia Travel Association.

The Asia-Pacific Travel Intentions Survey 2010 included 6,714 respondents from 13 countries and territories. It said that among future inbound tourists who were most likely to visit Vietnam in the next two years, 17 per cent were from Thailand, 16 per cent were from Australia and 11 per cent were from Japan and Singapore.

These countries are Vietnam’s key tourism markets, according to the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism’s (MCST) Vietnam National Administration of Tourism.

According to Vietnam’s General Statistics Office, Vietnam received over 4.6 million foreign tourists during this year’s first 11 months, up 36.5 per cent against the same period last year.

Tourists from Thailand to Vietnam augmented by 42.6 per cent, Australia 31 per cent, Japan 22 per cent, China 76.7 per cent and South Korea 38 per cent against 2009’s corresponding period.

Foreign visitors most likely to visit Vietnam in the next two years ranked natural scenery, new places and affordability as their top attractions. They are also likely to be single and preferred to stay at four-star hotels compared with other types of accommodation. They would budget more than $1,200 for their next vacation and pay more for good food and the opportunity to experience new cultures, according to the survey.

“The survey can partly help tourism companies devise their future tourism plans, and help local authorities continue turning Vietnam into a more attractive tourism destination,” said Do Thi Hong Thoa, director of the Hanoi-based Viet Traditions-Travel Services Joint Stock Company.

Truong Minh Ha, Visa’s country manager in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, said that with tourism emerging as one of Vietnam’s key economic drivers, the survey showed where visitors to Vietnam were coming from, their plans and what motivated them.

“This information is very useful for the Vietnamese tourism industry to help identify opportunities and create promotional activities based on their preferences and to attract more tourists,” Ha said.

MCST Minister Hoang Tuan Anh recently reported that in 2010 Vietnam would be visited by over five million foreign tourists, and the number of local tourists would be over 28 million. The industry expects total revenue this year would be over VND85 trillion ($4.47 billion).

This means that the number of foreign tourists to Vietnam will augment by 76 per cent against last year. Meanwhile, the World Tourism Organization forecast that world tourism would grow by only 5-10 per cent this year.



Source: VIR

[jackbl]

Same as what we experienced in our pubs & KTV

All smoke, no fire
=====================

Vietnam’s ban on smoking and its curbs on tobacco promotion are being observed comfortably in the breach

A public smoking ban that took effect almost one year ago has been ineffective, and tobacco companies are having a field day in Vietnam.

Nguyen Thanh Binh, a journalist based in Ho Chi Minh City, says with sense of irony that he is virtually unaware of any smoking ban.

“When the ban came into force a year ago, everyone kept talking about it. But since then we’ve seen no enforcement or sanction, so what’s the point of observing it?” said the 25-year-old scribe who smokes 15 cigarettes per day on average.

A Vietnamese government decree effective January 1 this year prohibits smoking indoors in public places. But little headway has been made since.

“We have to admit that enforcement and compliance are [still] poor,” said Pham Hoang Anh, Vietnam director of HealthBridge Canada, an international NGO which seeks to work with partners worldwide to improve health and health equity through research, policy and action.

“[It is] due to the weak level of sanctions, unclear enforcement mechanisms, low public awareness of the regulation and of the hazards of secondhand smoke, and high social acceptability of smoking.”

Expats are none the wiser about the ban.

“Australia banned smoking in bars while I was living in Vietnam. Moving back home and having to leave your drink with a security guard was very strange but it did inspire a kind of camaraderie amongst the smokers,” said an Aussie expat in Hanoi who declined to be named.

“Here [in Vietnam] that's less necessary as most expats already know each other. I've never seen the smoking ban enforced. No one even knows there is one.”

The Global Adult Tobacco Survey 2010, the international standard for systematically monitoring adult tobacco use and tracking key tobacco control indicators, shows that currently around 15.3 million people actively smoke in Vietnam and an estimated 46.8 million are exposed to secondhand smoke.

“[These facts] provide strong evidence that the tobacco epidemic continues throughout the country,” said Jorge Alday, a spokesperson for New York-based NGO World Lung Foundation.

Smoking caused around 40,000 deaths in Vietnam in 2007, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates. This figure could surge to 70,000 by the end of 2030 if drastic measures are not taken, the UN agency warns.

Internationally, second-hand tobacco smoke kills upward of 600,000 people every year, nearly a third of them children, according to the first-ever global assessment published last month in the British medical journal The Lancet.


Big brother

It is not just the ban that has been ineffective.

Anti-tobacco groups have criticized tobacco companies for capitalizing on legal loopholes in Vietnamese laws to launch aggressive marketing campaigns to promote the habit and the product.

Vietnam ratified in 2005 the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, an international treaty which requires countries to restrict tobacco publicity. Vietnamese laws also ban direct and indirect advertising, sponsorship and promotions, even at sales outlets.

Under the regulations, cigarette companies are not supposed to display more than one pack of a cigarette brand at any sales point. But companies and retailers have circumvented this rule by displaying different varieties of the same brand like menthol, lights or regular, anti-tobacco groups say.

They add that this strategy will lead to brands creating a variety of flavors or types so that, as in Vietnam, certain brands can dominate a large section of the display, while using just one pack of each kind.

As for indirect promotions, Alday of the World Lung Foundation says, “In Vietnam as in many other places, direct advertising has been replaced by more subtle promotional techniques such as corporate social responsibility projects. Examples include funding education or youth projects across the country or even providing disaster relief.”

Anh of HealthBridge Canada adds, “The aim of these activities is to manipulate the public’s attitude toward their reputation and send the message that they are looking out for the public’s best interest.”

Vietnam’s amended Trade Law 2005 bans all forms of sponsorship by tobacco companies. But the law stopped short of completely prohibiting sponsorship of philanthropic activities.

So far this year, British American Tobacco–Vinataba (BATVJ), a joint venture between the London-based British American Tobacco company and the Vietnam National Tobacco Corporation, has been in the news for providing five Vietnamese provinces with 22.5 million seedlings totaling VND1 billion ($51,300). BATVJ is also being investigated for cooking its books between 2006 and 2008, police in the southern province of Dong Nai, where the joint venture is based, said in October.

The Vietnam National Tobacco Corporation (Vinataba) had also, through media channels, announced pledges of VND5 billion to support poverty alleviation efforts in Bac Ai District in the south-central province of Ninh Thuan.

But the Bac Ai District government said in a recent report that they had received nothing from Vinataba and asked the state-owned tobacco giant to honor its “corporate social responsibility.”

Anti-tobacco groups have urged Vietnamese legislators to clearly define advertisement to prevent any circumventing ploys by the tobacco industry.

The government has been drafting a comprehensive tobacco control law since 2008 but the bill is set to be submitted to the National Assembly, Vietnam’s legislature, for reviewing and passing early next year.

“There are plenty of gaps that can be filled in this issue... Vietnam should follow the WHO guidelines on the protection of public health policies from commercial and other vested interests belonging to tobacco industry,” said Anh.

Vietnam plans to impose heavy environment taxes on tobacco from 2012 onwards. Currently, cigarettes are taxed at 32 percent. With a tax increase of 20 percent, retail prices would increase by about 10 percent and government tax revenues will go up by VND1.9 trillion, the WHO estimates.

“The tobacco epidemic has had severe health and economic consequences for individuals and the society,” said Nguyen Thi Xuyen, deputy minister of Health. “To protect Vietnamese from tobacco use's related burdens, the Ministry of Health has strongly supported policies for implementing the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.”

‘What will be, will be’

Journalist Binh said he is not afraid of any health consequences of tobacco. This gung ho attitude towards smoking impacts worries anti-tobacco groups the most. They say that as long as there is little awareness of the health dangers, smoking will remain socially acceptable.

According to the Global Adult Tobacco Survey 2010, 47.4 percent of Vietnamese men currently smoke. At a conference in HCMC last week, the Tumor Hospital filed a report pointing out that the southern economic hub records around 6,000 new cancer cases every year. So far this year, the hospital has admitted over 14,000 cancer patients compared with 13,200 last year. Lung and liver cancer accounted for the highest percentage among the male patients, the hospital report said.

But Binh said he saw no reason to worry. “What will be, will be. I have been smoking in all the places that I used to smoke.

“The ‘ban’ here is [almost] nothing. As far as I can see, changes are too subtle to be noticed.”

Reported by An Dien

[jackbl]

Yahoo see VN no up

Yahoo has no respect for Vietnamese clients
================================================== ==

VietNamNet Bridge – There is not a single internet user in Vietnam that does not know Yahoo, the leading online service provider in the world with free diversified and attractive services. However, it seems that the service provider has different attitudes to different markets and has been providing services with different levels of quality to different clients.

No need to respect newly emerging market?

Yahoo began providing the services specifically designed for Vietnam’s market in early 2000s. The pioneering service provider might have realized the great potentials of a huge market with a population of 80 million. However, according to VnMedia newspaper, some services for Vietnamese clients are not high quality, services even though they are free of charge.

It is estimated that 98 percent of Vietnamese internet users (about 20 million people) access the internet to read news. Especially, a significant number of people access Yahoo regularly to read general news updates. However, the news service by Yahoo Vietnam has been provided in a way which is completely below the international standards and stature of the giant. Can it be true that Yahoo has been deliberately forgetting to invest to develop news services, the basic service which has been catching the attention of nearly all Vietnamese internet users?

Presentation mistakes, design mistakes, and “automatic” mistakes

Also according to VnMedia, mistakes appear daily on all of Yahoo Vietnam’s bulletins. The mistakes in presentation and the displayed links prove to be the typical examples. While the biggest advantages of Internet bulletins are that they allow readers to link to different news articles and search relating stories, many bulletins of Yahoo Vietnam that quote Vietnamese big newspapers do not show weblinks. In many cases, the news on Yahoo show links, but the links do not exist, leaving readers dumbfounded when they cannot find the relating stories. Meanwhile, the disorderly links at the end of original news articles overshadow the often redundant phrases in the news articles.

VnMedia has cited some links as follows:

*http://vn.news.yahoo.com/tto/2010120...o-ef16c59.html
*http://vn.news.yahoo.com/vne/2010120...c-74fc0b1.html
*http://vn.news.yahoo.com/vne/2010112...h-154962f.html
*http://vn.news.yahoo.com/vne/2010120...r-74fc0b1.html


Mistakes of this kind appear every day on Yahoo News in Vietnamese version which have not been corrected later. Besides, the bulletins have been presented in a very careless way that does not follow any coherent style. The content of the bulletins are not identical, while news articles regularly have unrelated information or explanations that have not been edited or put in the right order. The noteworthy thing is that this is the chronic problem which has existed for a long time. However, there is no sign showing that the service provider has realized the mistakes and it wants to correct them.

As for choosy readers, the news on Yahoo News (Vietnamese version) is not high quality. Especially, the news articles are considered as “want ads” rather than articles. Meanwhile, the “ads” are always in advantageous positions on the home page of the bulletins.

All the issues above cited prove to be contrary with the Yahoo News (international version). Online all readers can witness the best things of the “giant” Yahoo with multi-media language (not only text and normal images). As such, Vietnamese people may feel offended because of the discriminatory treatments.

Online service providers do not provide online services

It is not easy to find the columns “Tro giup” (help) and “Phan hoi” (feedback) on Yahoo news from which people can seek support from the service providers. In order to do that, you need to become very skillful internet user. Meanwhile, Vietnamese clients cannot get online support and there is no hotline contact. Meanwhile, even small e-commerce websites in Vietnam can provide support through the hotlines, or through Yahoo Messenger – the instant message service provided by Yahoo itself.

According to analysts, the problems can be settled very easily, especially for a giant provider like Yahoo. The problem now is whether the service provider wants to fix the problems and when it wants to do this.

Though Vietnam remains a small market which still cannot generate a high turnover to the service provider, Vietnamese clients still want respect from the giant service provider, because on the virtual market of the internet, everyone wants to be equal to each other.

Source: VnMedia

[jackbl]

Over 4000 Vietnamese women and children trafficked abroad in five years
================================================== ===========

VietNamNet Bridge – Nearly 1600 human trafficking cases were discovered in Vietnam in the past five years, with over 3500 women and nearly 500 kids being sold abroad, according to statistics by the Public Security Ministry.

According to statistics, over 60 percent of the victims were sold to China and 11 percent to Cambodia. Police also arrested 2900 people involved in these cases.

Human trafficking has become very complicated in Vietnam in recent years. Some cases discovered by police were organizational and transnational.

Vietnam is trying to build laws and cooperate with other countries to curb human trafficking.

It is estimated that at least 22,000 women and children were illegally sent to China during the 1990s.

In Vietnam, trafficking can take the form of arranged marriages that frequently result in the women becoming domestic slaves rather than wives. Other victims find themselves in the sex trade instead of the factory job they were promised.

According to UNICEF, approximately 60% of the estimated 45,000 prostitutes in Cambodia’s capital city, Phnom Penh, are Vietnamese.

Vietnamese men, women, and girls are trafficked for sexual and labor exploitation in Cambodia, China, Thailand, Hong Kong, Macau, Malaysia, Taiwan, South Korea, the United Kingdom, and the Czech Republic for commercial sexual exploitation.

Women and men are trafficked for forced labor in factories and for construction or as domestic servants. Vietnamese trafficking victims are recruited through fraudulent marriages, false promises of employment, licensed and unlicensed migrant labor recruiting agencies.


PV

[jackbl]

U can use ipad in vn now

Local network launches data plan for iPad
================================================== =

A Vietnamese wireless operator, Vinaphone, has launched the first-ever data service in Vietnam for the iPad, a popular tablet-shaped computer produced by Apple Inc.

The 3G data plans, which became available on Tuesday, start from VND35,000 per month for one gigabyte a month, Vinaphone said in a statement.

Vinaphone called the launch of the new service “a new step forward in the cooperation between Apple and Vinaphone in Vietnam.”

The iPad has become a big hit for Apple since it was first introduced in April this year. According to Citigroup’s estimates, 35 million tablet PCs will be sold worldwide next year and about 26 million of them will be the iPad.

Not long after the international launch, local phone and electronics shops in Vietnam started selling the tablet, at much higher prices than those listed on the Apple website.

Apple has over 300 retail stores worldwide but it has not opened one in Vietnam. The company, however, sells the iPad to Vietnamese customers online.

Lao Dong newspaper on Tuesday cited a source as saying Vinaphone also plans to distribute the tablet officially in Vietnam. The network and military-run Viettel are the nation's two official distributors of Apple’s iPhones.

Source: Thanh Nien

[jackbl]

3G in Vietnam: even “the poor” can use high quality services
================================================== =======
VietNamNet Bridge – At first, 3G services in Vietnam were thought to be designed only for those with high income. However, since service providers have been continuously lowering their fee, 3G has become affordable for the majority of people.

3G services have been provided in Vietnam for one year. At first, Vietnamese people thought that these were “luxurious” services they could never afford. However, they have changed their minds.

Trung, an ADSL broadband user, said that he has been using this service since 2006. But now he switched to 3G service.

Explaining his decision, Trung said that the quality of 3G Internet is in no way inferior to ADSL, while he can use the Internet everywhere, and the charges are “reasonable”. Now, he accesses Internet every day with Fast Connect provided by MobiFone, one of the three biggest mobile service providers in Vietnam.

Trung is not alone. More and more Vietnamese people with medium incomes chose 3G broadband services to surf on Internet. An ADSL service package, is no less than 100,000 dong a month. Meanwhile, , it is easy for clients to find a mobile broadband plan that is suitable to their needs for which they only have to pay 50,000 dong

Trung said he could not believe that the charges for 3G services could be so low until he saw that service providers kept on reducing them. MobiFone, for example, has been lowering the charges several times over the last year, since it began providing 3G services.

Most recently, the service fee for Mobile Internet has reduced by 80 percent to 10 dong/10kb from 50 dong. Meanwhile, the service fee for Fast Connect has reduced sharply by 94 percent to 65 dong/Mb from 1024 dong.

Currently, there is gap between the fees charged by big service providers such as VinaPhone, Viettel and MobiFone. However, analysts say it is not big, while clients have a choice of based on the service? popularity, telephone? brands, and quality of customer service.

According to the Ministry of Information and Telecommunication and mobile service providers, mobile Internet is the main selling point of 3G services .

Seeing the growing demand, service providers compete with each other in offering various discounts and promotions to make their products more affordable to Vietnamese customers. As the result,, 3G services are not considered as “luxurious” any more, as service providers aim to “bring 3G to everyone”.

A year ago, when MobiFone officially launched 3G services into the market, Le Ngoc Minh, Director of VMS MobiFone said he believed that with the high demand, his compnay would be able to regain its investment capital quickly. He estimated that some 10-15 percent of 35 million registered MobiFone subscribers switch from 2G to 3G services.

Source: Dau tu

[jackbl]

Biz opportunity........

Vietnam’s market of applications for mobile phones attractive in foreigners’ eyes
================================================== =======
VietNamNet Bridge – Vietnam’s market, with 50 million regular mobile phone subscribers, a developing 3G infrastructure , but a limited number of mobile phone applications, is gold mine for foreign companies.


The unexplored territory

According to the Ministry of Information and Communication, Vietnam now has 156.1 million phone subscribers, 90.32 percent of which are mobile phones (180.7 phones per 100 people). Vietnam has been listed among the markets with the highest growth rates in the world.

The market is predicted to develop significantly in the time to come, when Vietnam utilizes 3G technology on a large scale. MobiFone is now providing 60 different services based on mobile network, VinaPhone 50. However, the services are just basic services.

The mobile phone application market is considered a gold mine as Vietnam is trying to develop 3G technology, and the number of people using smartphones has been rapidly increasing. According to Vien Thong A, a distributor of mobile devices, smartphones have witnessed the most impressive growth rates in the last few years. 367,712 smartphones were consumed in 2009, representing a sharp increase of 434 percent in comparison with 2008. Meanwhile, the growth rate of popular mobile phones has dropped from 34 percent in 2008 to 24 percent in 2009.

Hoang Ngoc Diep, former General Director of Indochina Qualcomm, said that 3G technology in Vietnam has not been fully exploited and has not developed sustainably. “Digital content services remain very poor,” he said

Diep believes that Vietnam now needs more and more enterprises to join the mobile applications market, especially foreign companies which have significant experience in developing mobile applications integrated with e-commerce and e-government


Will foreign companies jump into the market?

Considered a gold mine, of course, Vietnam is catching the eyes of foreign companies.

In early November, Opera Software, a Norwegian company, organized a market survey tour to Vietnam. Rolf Assev, strategic director of Opera Software said that he was so surprised that Opera accounted for 70 percent of the mobile browser market in Vietnam especially because Opera Software has not had any advertisement campaigns in Vietnam.

“Vietnam is really a very attractive market that we must not miss,” he said

According to Opera Software, in Vietnam, 67 percent of people connecting to the internet with mobile devices are using Opera Mini browser, while 15 percent are using the Nokia’s browser.

On average, each person using Opera, uses 6MB of data and reads 237 websites a month, mostly news sites, domestic online newspapers, Google searches, entertainment clips on YouTube. Vietnam is now ranking the 7th among the top 10 countries that use Opera Mini.

Impressed by what they have found in Vietnam, the Norwegian company has decided to carry out commercial activities in Vietnam. The company said it will shake hands with mobile service providers in Vietnam including Viettel, VinaPhone, MobiFone to provide mobile applications, and soon localize products for local users.

Nguyen Huu Hanh, General Director of Yahoo! Vietnam also said the company is now keeping a keen eye on the market at a time when Vietnam is clearly trying to develop 3G technology.

According to Hanh, two years ago, when launching Yahoo! Mobile, there were only 250,000 users. One year later, the figure rose to 1.2 million, and by October 2009, when 3G network was launched, the services attracted 4.1 million users



Source: Thoi bao Kinh te Saigon

[jackbl]

Lesbian wedding in Hanoi heats up online community
================================================== =====
VietNamNet Bridge – Just several hours after a clip featuring a wedding party of two girls in Hanoi was uploaded on Facebook, it became a big controversy on online forums in Vietnam.

The couple, both 19, knew each other for a long time and a big wedding was organized recently, which surprised their friends and relatives.

The bride is a student at the Hanoi International Raffles University. The other bride is a project manager at a media company in Hanoi and a marketing employee for another firm.

After the wedding, the couple lives with their parents. After one girl finished her course at Raffles, they will go abroad for further studies.

In the wedding party, the couple had very intimate kisses but some are worried about their future.

Cuong Mars Le, who posted the wedding clip, wrote: “They are very brave to go after their happiness but we should understand the feelingsof their parents. Though they accepted the wedding and were happy for their children, there is still sadness deep inside their hearts. Was that a mature or ebullient decision of young people?”

This is the first public wedding party of homosexuals in Hanoi.



LT

[v.killers]

Jack kor kor,

This thread become a Vietanmese news thread izzit?

hahahaha !!!

[leecs]

Informative...................

[jackbl]

Originally Posted by v.killers

Jack kor kor,

This thread become a Vietanmese news thread izzit?

hahahaha !!!

Yes, since nobody post so I post some news to liven this thread

[KangTuo]

Originally Posted by jackbl

Yes, since nobody post so I post some news to liven this thread

Reason can be either of the 3 -
1) A lot of TV expert now. No translation require.
2) Vb sms is all about 'tien'. Bros sms is all about 'lam tinh'
3) Bros who post questions, will get scolding from jackbl, so mind as well don't post.