Nearly 2 decades of perseverance to create Viettel's 'world-changing' program

Recently, Fortune announced the ranking of businesses with important contributions to sustainable development and positive impacts on society (Top 50 Change the world 2024), Viettel ranked 3rd and is the only telecommunications company in the world on the list.

In September 2008, Viettel and the Ministry of Education and Training officially started connecting the education network - Photo: VGP/MT

When conducting the evaluation, Fortune highlighted companies that demonstrated a pioneering role in solving major international problems, from climate change, inequality to public health. And Viettel was honored for its efforts to improve the quality of education in Vietnam and 10 foreign markets that Viettel invested in. Specifically, the educational network connection program, also known as the school Internet, has changed the way of teaching and operating schools in the traditional way, spanning many years, opening up a new and unlimited way of accessing knowledge. For nearly 2 decades, the Internet provided by Viettel for educational institutions has gone from something new and strange to something familiar and indispensable for teachers and students in their daily activities. Viettel helps 25 million people access the Internet Vietnam officially connected to the international Internet on November 19, 1997. However, after more than a decade, the concept of "going online" was not really popular in Vietnam, especially in rural, remote, and disadvantaged areas. By 2007, according to the Ministry of Information and Communications, the number of Internet users in Vietnam only accounted for about 24% of the country's population. According to statistics from the Department of Information Technology (Ministry of Education and Training), as of early 2008-2009, there were still more than 17,000 out of 27,500 schools nationwide that were not connected to the Internet, accounting for 62%. In that context, Viettel Group (then Viettel Military Telecommunications Corporation) and the Ministry of Education and Training signed a memorandum of understanding in September 2008, officially starting the connection of the educational network. The 2008-2009 school year was also identified by the Ministry of Education and Training as "the school year to promote the application of information technology". Viettel's leaders at that time said that this was a great effort by Viettel to support the application of information technology in the education sector, "flattening" learning and research opportunities between school systems, and modern educational methods will reach the most remote communes. Only 2 years later, Viettel fulfilled its initial commitment. With this result, Vietnam has become one of the few countries in the world with 100% of educational facilities connected to the network. In the 2010 report of SEAMEO - the ASEAN Ministers of Education Organization, the assessment of ICT in education ranked Vietnam in a high position, on par with Thailand, Indonesia, and the Philippines. Just 2 years before that, Vietnam was ranked in the lowest group, along with Laos, Cambodia, and Myanmar. A new agreement was signed, with a commitment to upgrade the transmission lines for schools to broadband, ensuring faster and more stable access speeds. Over the past 16 years, in addition to providing transmission lines, Viettel has also supported many schools in upgrading their information technology infrastructure such as providing computers, printers and internal network systems. By 2024, the program has helped 25 million students and teachers access the Internet, contributing to increasing the Internet access rate in Vietnam to 85%.

With fast and stable transmission speed, the Internet has accompanied millions of students and teachers in Vietnam for over a decade - Photo: VGP/MT

"The heart of a soldier" From that success, later, when Viettel expanded its international investment, in areas where learning and teaching faced similar difficulties as Vietnam had experienced, Viettel continued to expand school Internet. In countries such as Peru, Mozambique, Burundi, Laos, and Cambodia, Viettel provided free Internet to schools nationwide with funding of up to several hundred billion VND in each country. For example, in Haiti, Viettel committed to the government to install the network for more than 1,000 schools in the period 2021-2025. Later, in the world, a number of large organizations and names in the world also implemented projects to cover the Internet to disadvantaged groups. We can mention Google's Loon project (launched in 2013), Facebook's Internet.org (Meta) (launched in 2015) with the goal of bringing the Internet to remote areas or the closest is the GIGA initiative initiated by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in 2019, aiming to help schools in many countries without internet connection. Viettel, with the view from the first day of business that profit is not everything, it is necessary to contribute to the community, has proven its right vision when pioneering and early implementing the integration of the Internet into the education sector. To quickly implement the project, maintain it persistently and last until now, we must mention the foundation of Viettel, a telecommunications enterprise operating in many countries, possessing a strong infrastructure. Above all, Viettel also stands out for its tenacious spirit, never giving up. Mr. Nguyen Thien Nhan, former Minister of Education and Training, once commented: "The program shows the heart of a soldier. Although education (Ministry of Education and Training) does not assign tasks to the army, the army, with the spirit of having soldiers wherever there is difficulty, has solved the educational bottleneck in information technology, which is the infrastructure problem. Without the heart and will of a soldier, it would be much slower and much longer before we could popularize the Internet to schools nationwide." Source: https://baochinhphu.vn/gan-2-thap-ky-ben-bi-lam-nen-chuong-trinh-thay-doi-the-gioi-cua-viettel-102241113145153938.htm