The Viet Nam Information Technology Press Club announced the top ten domestic information and communication technology (ICT) events of 2015.
The Viet Nam Information Technology Press Club announced the top ten domestic information and communication technology (ICT) events of 2015.
1. Bkav Corporation launched its first made-in-Vietnam smartphone, Bphone on May 26.
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A standard edition phone, with a storage capacity of 16GB, is on sale at a price of VND9,990,000 (more than US$450).
The event attracted not only the interest of the domestic media but also the international media for a long time.
2. The National Assembly passed the Law on Information Security at its 10th session of the 13th tenure on November 19.
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The law consisted of eight chapters and 54 clauses.
The law regulates cyber information security, rights and duties of agencies, organisations and individuals in ensuring cyber information security, and technical standards on cyber information security, in addition to business, human resource development and state management on cyber information security.
The law is considered an important legal document in boosting cyber information security in the country.
3. The Viet Nam Post and Telecom Group (VNPT) completed its restructuring by establishing three corporations.
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The three corporations are VNPT-VinaPhone, VNPT-NET and VNPT-Media.
The establishment of the corporations helped VNPT's production and business activities form a value chain from "content", "infrastructure" to "customers".
With this, VNPT completed Phase 2 of its restructuring plan and are moving to Phase 3.
4. The government issued Resolution 36a/NQ-CP on building e-Government in Viet Nam on October 14.
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The resolution aimed at improving operation quality and efficiency of state agencies, as well as serving people and enterprises.
The resolution's target for three years, from 2015 to 2017, is to focus on promoting administrative reform associated with boosting IT application in managing and providing online public services, shortening process, and simplifying and standardising files' content, while reducing time and cost when implementing administrative procedures.
5. The Viettel Telecommunications Group (Viettel) officially inaugurated its 4G pilot service in the southern province of Ba Ria - Vung Tau with more than 200 base transceiver stations.
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The event made Viettel the first mobile network provider in Viet Nam to pilot the 4G service.
6. The government portal tried out a fan page on Facebook called "Thong tin Chinh Phu" or "Government information" on October 20.
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The page aimed to carry news about the government activities faster and wider on the Internet.
The government expected that through the fan page, government information would reach people faster.
7. The National Numbering Plan took effect in March, including a plan to change all 11-digit mobile phone numbers into 10-digit numbers and change telephone area codes.
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The change of telephone area codes will be carried out within two years.
8. 2015 is considered the year Vietnamese telecom providers introduce over-the-top (OTT) services, worrying about the moving of users to free apps like Zalo and Viber.
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VinaPhone launched its OTT app, called VietTalk, in the beginning of the year. In April, Viettel introduced Mocha.
On August, MobiFone announced its pilot app, called Halo.
9. The central city of Da Nang stopped broadcasting television programmes with analogue signals from November 1 to switch to digitalisation of television programmes.
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The city became the first city in Viet Nam and ASEAN to successfully implement the digitalisation.
The digitalisation helped viewers to watch more TV channels on a frequency with high-definition images.
10. Google CEO Sundar Pichai visited Viet Nam on December 22.
He had a meeting with Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung and talked with Vietnamese tech start-ups, students and enterprises in Ha Noi.
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This was the first time a high-level leader of Google visited Viet Nam.
Earlier, in the beginning of December, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, also attended a seminar on social network, mobile phones, big data and cloud computing in HCM City.
(Source:VNS)
