$55M in Data Centers Planned for Vietnam

Here's an indicator that Internet infrastructure is spreading everywhere there are web surfers. While much of the Asia-Pacific rim is well wired with data centers, Vietnam has been the exception, as many of the country's web sites are hosted in the U.S. or Australia.

But not for much longer. Vietnamese technology company Quang Trung Software City (QTSC) and a U.S. company called DOT Vietnam have announced plans to build a $10 million data center in Ho Chi Minh City. The partners say they will invest an additional $45 million in building two additional data centers in other Vietnam cities by 2010.

The data center in Ho Chi Minh City will be about 1,000 square meters (10,800 square feet) and is scheduled to be completed in September. It will offer hosting and backup services to government agencies, multinationals, financial groups and banks, said QTSC's chief executive officer Chu Tien Dung.

Vietnam had roughly 18.6 million Internet users, or more than 22 percent of its total population by the end of 2007, up from nearly 14.7 million users by the end of 2006, the Vietnam Internet Network Information Center told the Xinhua news service on Thursday. Of those, 5.2 million have Internet accounts, and 1.3 million are using broadband. About 60,000 web sites were using the Vietnamese to-level domain of .vn at the end 2007.