HANOI, Aug. 20 (Xinhuanet) -- The number of Internet users in Vietnam, as of early this month, stood at nearly 5.4 million, or 6.6 percent of the country's population, up roughly 170 percent against last July.

    Among the users, the number of Internet subscribers rose 185 percent to over 1.4 million, of whom 57.3 percent are customers ofthe Vietnam Posts and Telecommunications Corporation, the Vietnam Internet Network Information Center told Xinhua on Friday.

    Now, Vietnam houses nearly 7,700 websites with the .vn domain names, mostly .com.vn and .org.vn, up from 3,200 in early August 2003. It also has total international Internet bandwidth of 1,038 Mbps.

    The country is implementing a program entitled Digital Opportunities for Vietnamese Rural Youths, aiming to eradicate computing illiteracy, and offering 20 million rural young people access to the Internet in the next few years.

    In 2003, its information technology (IT) market plus the telecommunication market were valued at nearly two US billion dollars. The figure for 2010 is estimated at 5.5 billion dollars.

    To this end reach, Vietnam will upgrade IT infrastructure, develop human resources, improve IT applications, and strengthen the domestic IT industry. It also plans to encourage all economic sectors to take part in the IT and communication sector. Enditem