Southeast Asia Plays Catch-Up

India and Vietnam struggle to upgrade their phone infrastructure.

One of the fastest-growing markets for the Internet is Southeast Asia, an area that covers India and Indonesia and other huge nations. Leading the way is Singapore, a city-state of only 2.8 million people. Of course, it's easier to wire a city-state than, say, India, a country with 900 million people and a notoriously bad phone system.

Singapore's three Internet providers--Cyberway, Pacific Internet, and SingNet--have completed the work on their own private backbone that will provide faster service to the nation's 100,000 users. Called the Singapore Internet Backbone, the network is a sing le E1 (2.048-Mbps) line. In simple terms, the circuit will consist of a link from SingNet to Pa cific Internet, one from Pacific Internet to Cyberway, and a third from Cyberway to Singnet, say officials at Pacific Internet, which previously had a 128-Kbps link to Singnet.

Aside from Singapore, Southeast Asia's Internet base is small because "PC penetration in the region is very low," according to Janardan Menon, an industry analyst at Dataquest-Singapore. "India has only two ISPs, but the nation is starting to develop a lot of Web sites," he says.

Indonesia, a country with more than 180 million people and more than 13,600 islands, had only one ISP two years ago; today, it has 20, sources say. Indonesia's Internet market is expected to jump from 10,000 users in 1995 to 100,000 in 1997, according to Aimnet, an Internet software developer. Indonesia's largest ISP is Radnet. Working closely with PT Telkom and PT Indosat, the nation's state-run local and international c arriers, respectively, Radnet offers various services, including simple dial-up shell accounts, SLIP/PPP dial-up accounts, and connections of 2 Mbps.

Other nations are getting into the act, including Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, and, surprisingly, Vietnam, a nation of some 74 million people and a per-capita income of only $180 per year. Vietnam's telecommunication authority, Vietnam Posts and Telecommunications (VNPT), will spend nearly $3 billion over the next few years to develop its phone infrastructure. One of the goals is to complete a fiber-optic network that connects the nation's 53 provincial centers. U.S. Sprint last year signed a deal with VNPT to set up and manage Vietnam's information superhighway, a program known as IT2000.

In 1994, there were only 30 Internet users in Vietnam. By 1995, the number had grown to 300. Vietnam's state-run Information Technology Institute is the gateway to the Internet in the nation. Vietnam's ISP, Netnam, charges a one-time fee of $20, plus $60 fo r the first two months of service.