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Right :Tran BA Thai, Project Leader and head of NetNams networking department

Despite Vietnam being a relative latecomer to the Internet – the government only allowed a full connection in late 1997 – NetNam has had a long association with the Internet through various research and development activities and pioneering staff such as Tran Ba Thai and Vu Duy Loi. The two Networking Specialists have been experimenting with Internet in Vietnam since as far back as 1991, when the Institute of Information Technology (IOIT) trialed a dial-up connection with the University of Karlsruhe in Germany. According to Thai, the experiment was hampered by high access costs and bad lines, which prevented much of the data from getting through. Nevertheless, it provided a taste of the Internet and encouraged them to experiment further.

In early 1993 they met with researchers at the Australian National University (ANU), who were willing to provide a grant through an Australia-Vietnam research cooperation scheme. They used this to set up another link, which utilised software called Kermit to establish a server-to-server e-mail connection. They later moved to a UUCP connection that allowed them to set up VARENET – the Vietnam Academic, Research, and Education Network. However, the grant ran out after one year and Vietnam's Internet connection again went quiet.

In 1994 NetNam was created to fill the void. NetNam was established as a not-for-profit service but was allowed to charge a service fee in order to expand the system. With later assistance from IDRC through its Pan Asia Networking (PAN) project, the team has been able to further build its networking capacity. Up until November 1997 NetNam again used a UUCP connection to ANU in Australia to provide Internet mail to its predominantly NGO, academic and research clients. It also had a local bulletin-board service (BBS) that contained a number of file libraries and locally-oriented material. So when the government finally allowed for full Internet access in late 1997, NetNam was well-prepared and is today one of the most established players.

The next step for IOIT will be to become a fully-commercial ISP. That process is almost complete. In the future, NetNam will not only continue to serve grassroots communities in Vietnam but be able to improve its infrastructure and provide quality and sustainable services to its traditional user base of NGOs and academic and research organisations.

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