Mobifone to trial 5G services in Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, Hai Phong and Da Nang, becoming the second mobile operator in Vietnam to conduct trials of the next-generation of mobile communications, similar to what AT&T, Xfinity, and Verizon – three names of the biggest phone service providers in the US – are doing.
During the validity of the trial license, which expires on April 22, 2020, Mobifone will provide enhanced mobile broadband free of charge to its customers so that they can experience high and ultra-high definition videos, in addition to online gaming at high speeds. NDO, a local newspaper reported.
The carrier is gearing up along with its partners to make plans for the test.
According to NDO, Mobifone stated that the trials will be carried out with quipment from various producers in order to evaluate the quality of service and deal with any arising problems before the mass roll-out.
In addition to making the necessary preparations for 5G testing, Mobifone has also been working hard to improve the quality and coverage of its 4G services.
The company installed another 4,500 4G cellular towers in the first quarter of 2019, and is expected to raise the total number of its 4G towers to 30,000 by the end of the year.
Vietnam International Bank (VIB) just debuted the VIB Zero Interest Rate Credit Card – which offers free of interest rate for all card expenses for customers of the bank.
VIB became the first and only bank in the county to waive interest rates for card holders up to five years of their cards’ validity, instead of 45 to 60 days as is typical.
The card’s 3D-secure and integrated features enable cardholders to easily manage cards anytime and anywhere by using internet banking or the outstanding mobile banking application of the bank – MyVIB. Which helps them lock cards in emergency cases or open online payment features, reset passwords conveniently and quickly on mobile phones.
Not only waiving interest rates for all card spending transactions, in addition, VIB also offer card holders free transaction fees in the first three months since the card being activated.
Huong Tran Thu, VIB’s Retail Banking Head, who unveiled VIB Zero Interest Rate Credit card
“A limited edition of VIB Zero Interest Rate Credit Card will be issued for our first 1,000 customers”, said Huong Tran Thu, Retail Banking Head of the bank.
Every customer, who has monthly average income from VNĐ12 million (US$510) will be eligible for VIB Zero Interest Rate Credit Card, the bank said
The drama is unfolding with increasing strangeness
What in the world is going on over at Samsung in the wake of the Galaxy Fold delay? The whole situation keeps refusing to normalize, and instead gets weirder nearly every day. The latest is that iFixit has decided to honor a Samsung request to pull its Galaxy Fold teardown off the internet, even though Samsung apparently didn’t ask iFixit to do so directly.
This oddity follows AT&T’s seemingly arbitrary decision to email a potential ship date for the Galaxy Fold despite the fact that Samsung hasn’t officially set a new release date. By requesting that iFixit pull the teardown, Samsung is apparently willing to risk the Streisand effect when it comes to people clamoring to see the innards of its device. Here’s part of iFixit’s statement on the matter:
We were provided our Galaxy Fold unit by a trusted partner. Samsung has requested, through that partner, that iFixit remove its teardown. We are under no obligation to remove our analysis, legal or otherwise. But out of respect for this partner, whom we consider an ally in making devices more repairable, we are choosing to withdraw our story until we can purchase a Galaxy Fold at retail.
Why is Samsung doing this? We’ve asked for comment, obviously, but we suspect an answer may not be forthcoming. That leaves us with a whole pile of possible reasons we can only speculate on.
On the charitable end of the interpretation scale is that Samsung is definitely reworking the Fold, the design will change, and Samsung doesn’t want to have a teardown out there for a device it isn’t ever going to ship. Possibilities get successively less charitable from there. Perhaps the partner who provided the Fold to iFixit wasn’t supposed to, and Samsung is just enforcing a contract.
Why did Samsung want the teardown pulled?
Or maybe it’s just that the teardown served as excellent evidence that there were obvious and potentially avoidable mistakes in the Fold’s design, namely that it was too easy for dirt and grit to get inside it. That was our take when when we originally looked at the teardown, though we were also impressed at how sturdy the hinge was.
Whatever Samsung’s reasoning, it’s not a great look to issue a takedown request in any situation. Why a company that’s already straining to quell the bad press around this device would invite more of it by requesting a takedown is baffling.
To be clear, Samsung has not sent any requests to The Verge to remove our review of the Fold as it was originally designed, or any of our other content. If it responds to our request for comment on this takedown or has anything else to say, we’ll definitely let you know.
In the meanwhile, you can read the Internet Archive’s version of iFixit’s Samsung Galaxy Fold teardown right here.
Vietnam is projected by Google to be the fastest-growing e-commerce market in Southeast Asia by 2025.
Along with that highly positive prediction comes a heated competition for the dominance of the market. With Lazada and Shopee’s deep pockets, there have been concerns for the future of local e-commerce players.
However, the latest numbers from iPrice Group’s Map of E-commerce show that local companies like Tiki and Sendo have all the reasons to believe in a bright future ahead.
A fierce competition
The biggest news happened last quarter for the e-commerce market is perhaps the closure of the online fashion merchant Robins.vn (formerly Zalora Vietnam).
Compared to Vuivui’s closure back in December, Robins.vn’s acquired even more attention and speculation. The reason is according to iPrice’s data, until Q4/2018, Robins.vn was still doing well, traffic-wise. They were the highest ranking among online fashion-only merchants in the country in terms of monthly website traffic. Moreover, the website also showed increase in traffic for the previous two quarters. But apparently that was not enough for them to keep the business going.
This abrupt end to Robins.vn’s online business once again emphasized the fierceness and unpredictability of the e-commerce competition in Vietnam. Before Robins.vn and Vuivui, there have been a string of local players failing to keep up with the competition, namely Beyeu.com, Deca.vn, Lingo.vn…
Positive progresses at the top
Put behind the bad news, this past quareter also marks several positive trends for the surviving local players, especially Tiki, Sendo, and Adayroi.
iPrice’s latest data shows that even though this past quarter includes the Tet Holiday period, which is usually a struggling time for e-commerce business in general, those three merchants still managed to maintain their good results traffic-wise from the previous quarters.
Website traffic of Tiki, Sendo, and Adayroi have grown exponentially since Q2/2018, Source: iPrice
Doing the best in this regard is Tiki. Similar to the previous Q4/2018, the website continued to achieve over 35 million visits per month on average for this quarter, which puts them solidly at the 2nd position nationally, higher than international competitor Lazada Vietnam and not too far away from the 1st-ranking Shopee. This result also means that Tiki’s web traffic has been growing at a rate of 23% per quarter on average since last year quarter 2.
These signs help confirm the upward direction that Tiki have been taking in recent time, ever since they acquired investment from JD at the beginning of 2018.
Aside from Tiki, the other notable local companies Sendo and Adayroi also have been showing encouraging signs. According to iPrice’s Map of E-commerce, the two companies both have an average traffic growth rate of over 16% per quarter for the past four quarters.
Not only that, in his latest interview with Tech in Asia, Sendo’s CEO Tran Hai Linh also confidently announced that his company was on track to achieve one billion USD in GMV (Gross Merchandise Volume) much earlier than the previously projected target of 2020.
Local players are fighting strong
In that same interview. Tran Hai Linh also asserted that: “[2019] will be an inflection point. The market will grow much faster, we will see sizable businesses [becoming] comparable to regional players [and] customers becoming more familiar with ecommerce.”
iPrice’s previous report for 2018 is completely in agreement with this prediction. In particular, iPrice showed that Sendo, Tiki, Thegioididong, three local e-commerce players from Vietnam did well enough in 2018 to be ranked among the 10 of Southeast Asia in terms of website traffic.
Tiki, Sendo, and Thegioididong among the top 10 most visited e-commerce websites in Southeast Asia in 2018, source: iPrice
This ranking on one hand helps prove the enormous interest in online shopping from Vietnamese consumers, and on the other hand shows that local players such as these three are totally capable of surviving the fierce competition against regional giants.
Talking about the chance of local one-market e-commerce players, Jeremy Chew – regional market analyst from iPrice, explained that a familiarity with the market and the consumers’ mindset is particularly important when it comes to e-commerce. And that is exactly the strength of local players who choose to focus on one single market like Tiki, Sendo, and the likes.
A proof for this comment can be found in their successful campaigns for Tet Holiday, a very important period for Vietnamese consumers. Sendo’s “Chợ Tết” campaign proved to be a success on social media when it gathered a strong wave of support from locals, which led to it being included in Buzzmetric’s top 10 most influential social campaigns last January. Not to be overtaken, Tiki’s video campaign in the same period was noted by Google themselves for its success.
iPrice Group is a meta-search website operating in seven countries across Southeast Asia namely in: HongKong, Malaysia Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines, and Vietnam. On a regular basis, iPrice Group releases key insights on topics pertaining e-commerce, startups, and others. As such, iPrice concluded in their report that once the local e-commerce companies gain access to more funding, they have all the abilities to fight strong and win big in the e-commerce competition.
LG Electronics Inc said on Thursday it would stop producing smartphones in South Korea and move manufacturing to Vietnam, joining global rivals shifting factories to low-cost locations as they battle a slump in global demand.
Samsung Electronics Co Ltd, the world’s biggest smartphone maker, said late last year it would cease operations at one of its mobile phone plants in China.
Japan’s Sony Corp is also closing its Beijing smartphone plant as it works to make its money-losing handset business profitable.
LG, whose smartphone business has been losing money for several years, said the move will boost annual production capacity of its smartphone plant in Vietnam by 83 percent to 11 million handsets from the second half of this year.
Shares in LG Electronics were trading up 2 percent, versus a 0.3 percent decline in the broader market.
There is a question that everybody focus on it that how the motor works.Have you ever realize what that component is present in the motor that allows it to rotate?Then you can take a step back and recall the functioning of a motor. The motor is a perfect blend of individual components which are correctly assembled over and allow proper functioning of it.
Well, everyone knows that each of the elements has its role. So, here we areassigning to offer high-end output where some of the essential things to be offered a required level of resistance.
A slip ring is considered to be a part of this arrangement whose primary function is to allow 360 degrees incessant rotation to motor. This slip usually rings some energy in order to allow constant rotation of the respective assembly. When it comes to engine, this energy is mainly called as electrical energy. In order to gather essential details, then you can even follow here.
Essential parts of electromechanical devices
Slip rings are a very important part of electromechanical devices such as DC generator, AC generator, etc.The size as well as design of the motor usually depends upon the engine in whichit is going to use. The most of the common slip rings are used in the automobiles are through pneumatic slip ring, pancake slip ring, wireless slip ring, bore slip rings, wire slip ring and much more. Slip rings are used for transferring the data as well as power from stationary sources in order towards the rotating one.
We are here going to describe to you about the Slip Ring Motor in detail so that you can get aware of the various aspects related to it.
Why are slip rings being used in the motor?
An electric slip ring is mainly said to be electromechanical device that allows the motor for transmitting the electrical as well as power signals from the stationary device towards therotating one. Well, it is considered to be the main component of electromechanical engine that permits the system in order to rotate continuously without limitations.
The essential design of the slip ring depends upon the application where it is going to be used. For information, slip rings are found in different names when it comes to the market;electrical swivels, rotary electrical joints and then collector rings which all are said to be the shared names that mainly utilizing forelectrical slip ring.
If we are handling over the usage of slip ring intended for data transmission, we need to have slip ring by means of higher bandwidth and improved electromagnetic interferences but if we are going to use it for power transmission, the aspects changes slightly. Whatever is the application you are going to use slip rings in, whatever be the size of the motor where it is going to be used,the essential components, i.e., rotating ring and stationary brushes remains the same.If we talk about the complete slip ring assembly it includes bearings, rings and end caps.
Usage of Slip Ring in AC Motors
AC Motor can be assumed to be the most beautiful examples of slip ring usage. We all know that slip rings are being used in the motor to allow rotations, but if we talk about AC Motors, the concept here is entirely different. Slip rings are mainly used here for inserting resistance to the rotor windings.Now, what’s that rotor windings?
AC induction motor is considered to be wound rotor motor and hence the winding being included here are rotor windings. If we discussrelated to construction of an AC Motor, it includes three slip rings. All the slip rings being included here are made up of copper or copper allow to wear higher temperatures and to conduct electricity successfully. All the three slip rings in the AC Motor are usually mounted over the motor shaft.
Every slip ring includes with the composition here are being connected to the three different phases of the rotor windings. Slip ring brushes are commonly made up of graphite and linked to a resistive device for offering controlled performance.
How does the Slip Rings in AC motor works?
The slip rings are wounded over the AC motor. Whenever we switched on the power button, the engine starts running. It takes some time for the motor to reach the operating speed, and once it achieves, the brushes involved in the composition are being lifted above with the help of slip rings. The slip rings get now out of the circuit to allow the seamless working of motor.
Slip rings put in resistance to the rotor windings that helps in taking up the rotor and stator current more aligned. Higher torque is then produced along with the low current. Slip rings in the AC generator are used in the startup phase of the AC motor working. Once it attains operating speed, these get short-circuited and the brushes start to lose control over the engine.
Difference between the slip ring and commutator
Due to the functioning of the slip ring in AC motor, it is somewhere assumed to be much similar to the commutator. There are a lot of similarities between a slip ring and a commutator, but still, there are a lot of differences in both as well.
A slip ring is a continuous ring that offers ongoing transmission of signal, power and datathrough it. But if we start to discuss mainly about the commutator, it is usually segmented and is being used in the DC motors more commonly to reverse the polarity of the current.
Conclusion
Slip rings are always said to be the main crucial components of every electromagnetic motor that presents continuous rotation to it. The slip ring usually attached to a rotating end on one side whereas to the stationary end to the other side in order to provide reliable performing. If we talk about the applications, they are just numerous from amusement parks to automated welders, from wind turbines to medical imaging machines there are a lot of applications that the slip ring are being used.
Slip rings are usually used for transmitting data, signals, and electricity to the stationary portion to the rotating one. The design and the size of the slip ring often vary in applications in which is going to be used in. Rather than the traditional functioning, slip rings inside the AC Motors that creates resistance rather than offering rotation.
Two young fishermen rescued five drowning children on Wednesday afternoon in the Ròon River in Cảnh Dương Commune, Quảng Trạch District, the central province of Quảng Bình.
After being rescued, two of the children were taken to hospital.
The children were all cousins who had been taken to the river for swimming by their parents. At about 5pm on Wednesday, the kids aged from 10 to 12 slipped down when swimming and were swept away by water flow. One of their fathers tried to reach and rescue the kids but was unable to. He then called for help.
The two fishermen heard the call and quickly sailed their boat out to rescue the kids.
At that time, the fishermen Phạm Thế Cường, 23 years old and Võ Khánh Thành, 17, were sailing to shore on their boat.
Several commercial banks in Vietnam have reported big profits in the first quarter of this year.
At the annual shareholders’ meeting, held on April 23, general director of the Vietnam Bank for Industry and Trade (VietinBank), Tran Minh Binh said that the bank made a profit of VND3.1 trillion (USD134.7 million), in the first quarter of 2019, an increase of 4 per cent over the same period of last year.
Binh said that the increase in profit came from the bank’s restructuring on loan market and non-credit activities.
At the meeting, it was announced that Vietinbank aimed to hike its total assets by 2-5 per cent in 2019; total outstanding loans to rise by 6-7 per cent; total deposits to grow by 10-12 per cent, and bad debt below 2 per cent.
The lender’s consolidated pre-tax profit was expected to reach VND9.5 trillion (USD407.7 million) by end-year, up 41 per cent year-on-year, of which the parent bank’s pre-tax profits will be at least VND9 trillion.
The bank’s shareholders agreed that all dividends projected for 2018 would be paid by shares at the rate of 8.03 per cent, or to use all 2018 profits to raise charter capital.
The bank’s board of directors will decide on the profit distribution plan after getting approval.
At Asia Commercial Bank’s (ACB) annual shareholders’ meeting 2019, chairman Tran Hung Huy, said that the bank may have some VND600 billion from dealing with bad debts to add in its expected profit of VND 7.3 trillion this year.
“ACB’s profit in this year’s first three months reached VND 1.7 trillion,” Huy said, adding that the State Bank of Vietnam has officially approved for the bank to follow Basel II standards.
Sai Gon Thuong Tin Commercial Joint Stock Bank (Sacombank) has also announced profit of VND 1.1 trillion in the first quarter, double last year’s figure. The bank has reached 40 per cent of this year’s profit target of VND 2.650 trillion.
The Joint Stock Commercial Bank for Foreign Trade of Vietnam (Vietcombank) announced a huge profit of VND 5.9 trillion in the first quarter of this year.
Vietcombank chairman Nghiem Xuan Thanh said that the bank targeted to make VND20.5 trillion in profit this year which is 12 per cent up on-year.
LG Electronics Inc said on Thursday it would stop producing smartphones in South Korea and move manufacturing to Vietnam, joining global rivals shifting factories to low-cost locations as they battle a slump in global demand.
Samsung Electronics Co Ltd, the world’s biggest smartphone maker, said late last year it would cease operations at one of its mobile phone plants in China.
Japan’s Sony Corp is also closing its Beijing smartphone plant as it works to make its money-losing handset business profitable.
LG, whose smartphone business has been losing money for several years, said the move will boost annual production capacity of its smartphone plant in Vietnam by 83 percent to 11 million handsets from the second half of this year.
Shares in LG Electronics were trading up 2 percent, versus a 0.3 percent decline in the broader market.
Hanoi’s Noi Bai International Airport will be expanded and has its capacity raised to 80 million passengers per year by 2050.
The Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam (CAA) and France’s ADPi Company signed a Memorandum of Understanding in Hanoi on April 24 about the detail planning to expand Noi Bai Airport. According to the memorandum, the airport’s capacity will reach 80-100 million in 2050.
The French government has approved non-refundable aid of USD1.31m and assigned ADPi to work with the CAA on a master plan. The plan will be submitted to the Transport Ministry for approval. The Hanoi Master plan for Transportation to 2030 states that Noi Bai Airport will be the northern region’s biggest airport, with capacity upgraded to serve 20-25 million passengers per year in 2020 and 50 million by 2030.
From 2015 to 2017, the aviation sector experienced massive growth. The annual passenger growth rate was 23% and 15.5% for cargo. Last year, the sector received 106 million passengers and 1.29 million tonnes of goods.
Noi Bai Airport has become overloaded and its runway and some construction have deteriorated. Deputy Prime Minister Trinh Dinh Dung asked the Ministry of Transport to research and adjust the planning to expand Noi Bai Airport towards both the north and the south.
Hanoi authorities were asked to work with the ministry to manage the land, deal with ground clearance work and resettlement.
ADPi provides comprehensive planning, architectural design, engineering and project management services for airports and other large-scale public facilities development projects. It has worked on many terminals, control towers, aircraft maintenance centres in many major cities such as Shanghai, Seoul and Dubai.
Chief inspector of the information ministry was arrested Thursday for involvement in the $420mln online gambling ring involving top cops busted last year.
Dang Anh Tuan, 49, is being investigated for taking undue advantage of his position and authority.
Police also carried out a search of his residence and workplace in Hanoi on Thursday.
The probe into Tuan, who has been the ministry’s chief inspector since April 2015, continues investigation of the online gambling case busted last year that has already seen several big heads roll.
According to police in the northern Phu Tho Province, who busted the case, an inspection team from the information ministry had already found signs of the online gambling being organized back in October 2016, but as chief inspector, Tuan did not report the findings to higher authorities and even suggested that the then minister stops the inspection.
Tuan’s actions and inactions allowed the violations to continue until they were detected by the police.
A court concluded last year that the ring operated under the protection of two top police officials.
Investigators found that Phan Van Vinh, former director of the General Police Department under the Ministry of Public Security, had helped Nguyen Thanh Hoa, former director of the ministry’s Department for High-Tech Crime Prevention and Nguyen Van Duong, chairman of high-tech security development company CNC, to set up the gambling ring, which has generated a total income of over VND9.8 trillion ($426 million) and a profit of VND4.7 trillion when it was busted.
Duong had previously been working with Hoa’s division to provide technical support before setting up the gambling service in May 2015 with Phan Sao Nam, founder and former board chairman of major online communications firm VTC.
According to investigators, the gambling ring headed by Nam and Duong on web portals Rikvip/Tip.club had established a large network of 25 “tier 1 agencies” and nearly 5,900 “tier 2 agencies” with nearly 43 million user accounts since being launched in mid-2015.
The illegal ring was found to The ring was first uncovered when Phu Tho police were investigating a fraud case involving mobile top-up cards in May 2016. The scammer in the case claimed he had redeemed all the cards for virtual currencies used in an online gambling card game.
Investigating this claim, police discovered Nam and Duong’s ring, which was run using the two online game portals that resembled professional casinos in which players could gamble virtual money and convert their winnings to real money.
At the trial last year, Vinh and Hoa were found guilty of “abusing power or position in the performance of official duties.”
Vinh got nine years in jail while Hoa was sentenced to 10 years. They were also fined VND100 million ($4,300) each. Vinh was arrested in April 2018 and Hoa a month earlier.
The trial also involved 90 other defendants who were charged with organizing gambling, money laundering, illegal trading of invoices, and using the internet to appropriate assets.
Of those, 17 were fined VND40 million each, 22 got probation and the rest received up to three years in jail.
Vietnamese police have apprehended a suspect in the killing on Wednesday of three people in a family, allegedly resulting from a personal animus toward one of the victims who had opposed the suspect watching porn at her house.
Officers said on Thursday that they had arrested Tran Trong Luan, a 34-year-old man from Tan Uyen Town in Binh Duong, a province around 35km to the east of Ho Chi Minh City, the day before.
Luan is accused of killing three family members, including a grandmother, a daughter, and a grandchild, in Tan Uyen.
The suspect, who was the victims’ neighbor, would watch porn on his smartphone whenever he came to the house of Dao Thi Thu Cuc, 54, for coffee, as the place doubles as a coffee shop, according to preliminary reports.
He was told to go home by Tran Thi Quynh Nhi, Cuc’s 17-year-old daughter, each time he opened porn, leading to his animosity toward the young girl.
Luan intended to commit suicide after losing all of his money in gambling on Tuesday evening.
But the intention of killing Nhi suddenly crossed his mind so he carried three knives and a machete to the coffee shop around 0:00 on Wednesday.
He was breaking into the house through the roof when Cuc found him. He then slashed her with the machete to death before going on to murder Nhi and her niece, 8-year-old Nguyen Thi Bao Ngan.
Police officers found the weapons Luan had thrown 100 meters away from the crime scene.
The crime story unfolded when neighbors heard dogs barking continuously at 3:00 am on Wednesday but they did not check the area, thinking someone might be working at the sand strip nearby.
At 7:00 am, Cuc’s eldest adult child Tran Minh Phuong dropped by to pick up her daughter, Ngan, on the way to work when she saw the little girl lying motionless on the floor amid blood.
She shouted for help from neighbors who rushed in to see Cuc and Nhi also dead.
Police were informed of the crime shortly.
They captured Luan after a raid on Wednesday. During the raid, the suspect tried to kill himself with poison but he survived after police took him to the hospital.
The suspect admitted to his crime at the police station.
The Vietnamese condotel market, the only one in the region, shows serious problems because of legal deadlocks.
Kai Marcus Schroter, CEO of Hospitality Tourism Management, commented that local authorities still lack necessary knowledge when assessing condotel projects.
Condotels are very attractive to many investors because they can generate cash flow even when products are still under construction. However, condotels seem to be overvalued in Vietnam.
In the real estate market, the world once witnessed a condotel boom 15-20 years ago in the Mediterranean and Europe. But now this kind of product no longer has influence on the market.
Thailand also saw a condotel boom 5-10 years ago, but there have been no new condotel projects. The investment model does not bring high profits as thought. In most Asia-Pacific markets, this product is no longer developed.
The committed profit of 10 percent per annum is not seen in any other market in the world except Vietnam.
The high committed profit rate is seen in Vietnam because many businesses still do not understand the operations of condotels. The expert said that investors will have to spend big money on operation costs to obtain a 10-15 percent profit rate.
The high profit rate can be attained only if condotels are located in famous positions and tourists return regularly.
It will take investors decades to make investments and advertise. In Vietnam, the profit rate of 10-15 percent is just for advertisements.
Sharing the same view, Adam Bury from JLL Hotels & Hospitality said if investors borrow 50-60 percent of capital needed to develop a condotel project, and they commit to a 10 percent profit for 10 years, this means that they will have to borrow nearly 100 percent of capital at the interest rate of 10 percent.
He went on to say that investors can sell products without commitment about profits. The Hyatt Park project in Da Nang is a success story.
Luis Mesquita De Melo from Asian Coast Development said that it is difficult for investors with limited financial capability to succeed with the condotel model.
To develop a condotel market, Vietnam needs to create a legal framework to regulate it.
According to DKRA, a market analysis firm, 2,100 condotels were marketed in the second quarter of 2018, but only 850 products were sold.
VPN usage is becoming more and more commonplace in the lives of consumers across the planet for many different reasons. You may have heard the term VPN (Virtual Private Network) used in discussions relating to internet security and data protection, or perhaps in relation to gaining access to different countries digital media services.
Depending on where You are in the world, these examples of VPN usage may be discussed in varied frequency, as it turns out, this is due to an equally varied list of reasons which have driven different countries to adopt the use of VPNs to suit their needs.
Let’s take a look at a small selection of the countries ranking highest in VPN usage, and their reasons for the populations increased use of Virtual Private Networks in day-to-day life.
Indonesia
A recently published infographic from BestVPNstated that approximately 38% of all internet users in Indonesia, equating to nearly 103 million people, use a VPN as part of their normal internet activity. The use of VPNs in this instance were attempts to overcome increasing governmental restrictions to the public use of the internet as a whole, as well as their access to information from outside of Indonesia.
India
Indian internet censorship and the degree of control exercised by the government is not as overbearing as a number of other countries in the region. Local internet censorship laws still take control over a range of content provided by websites and services such as Netflix, and the BBC. This has marked India’s primary use of VPNs to be one to access streaming media which the population normally has no opportunity to receive.
United Kingdom and the USA
In contrast to many of the eastern countries, The United Kingdom and USA are becoming much more concerned with the issue of government snooping and the protection of their personal data. In the wake of Facebook’s data mismanagement scandal, British and American internet users are adopting the use of VPNs to better control their data, and prevent unwanted information gathering from sources both domestic and international.
That is not to say there aren’t a fair percentage of these countries citizens using a Virtual Private Network for gaining access to media. In the early days of conversation relating to VPNs, one primary topic which appeared over and over, was the UK’s negative reaction to learning there was such a huge difference between content hosted on Netflix between the two countries. A problem which could be easily side-stepped by using a VPN.
While every country in the world will have different reasons for it’s citizens utilising a Virtual Private Network, it must be stated that the sheer number of people actively seeking out services provided by companies like NordVPN, Hola, and Tor, is indicative of a large-scale change in the way we may need to look at the internet in its entirety. Whether that is by way of the increasingly negative opinion of media distribution and broadcasting laws, or the safeguarding of data.
Foreign investors pour in $14.59 bn in first four months of the year, the Ministry of Planning and Investment reports.
Total newly-registered and additional capital and capital contributions and shares purchased by foreign investors stood at $14.59 billion in the first four months of 2019, up 81 per cent against the same period of 2018, according to the latest report from the Ministry of Planning and Investment (MPI) released on April 24.
There were 1,082 new projects granted investment licenses with total newly-registered capital of nearly $5.34 billion, up 50.4 per cent year-on-year, while 395 projects added capital to the tune of $2.11 billion, equivalent to 94 per cent of the same period of 2018.
According to a report on Vietnam Economic Times, there were 1,653 instances of capital contributions and share purchases by foreign investors in the period, with capital contributions standing at $5.68 billion; three-fold higher year-on-year and accounting for 52.6 per cent of total capital. FDI projects disbursed $5.7 billion in the first four months, up 7.5 per cent.
Nineteen fields received investment from foreign investors, in which processing and manufacturing attracted much attention, with total capital of nearly $10.5 billion, accounting for 72 per cent.
Real estate ranked second, with $1.1 billion, accounting for 7.5 per cent, while power, gas and water production and distribution ranked third, with $22.3 billion, or 6.7 per cent.
There were 80 countries and territories with new investment projects. Hong Kong again led the way, with nearly $4.7 billion, followed by South Korea with $1.98 billion and Singapore with $1.87 billion.
Sixty-three cities and provinces received investment in the period, in which Hanoi attracted the most, with more than $4.47 billion. Ho Chi Minh City ranked second, with more than $2.37 billion, then Binh Duong province, with $1.02 billion.
Exports by the foreign-invested sector (including crude oil) in the first four months were worth $55.4 billion, up 4 per cent year-on-year and accounting for 70.4 per cent of the total.
Exports excluding crude oil stood at $54.68 billion, up 3.9 per cent of the figure in the first four months of 2018 and accounting for 69.4 per cent of the total.
Imports by the FDI sector were $42.3 billion, up 9.3 per cent against the same period of 2018 and capturing 58 per cent of total import turnover.
The FDI sector therefore recorded a trade surplus in the first four months of $11.17 billion including crude oil and $10.5 billion excluding crude oil.
