Nearly 200 domestic and foreign enterprises will participate in the annual international telecom and electronics exhibition and conference --Vietnam Comm and Vietnam Electronics 2009 - which will be held in Hanoi from Nov. 18-21.

World-leading telecom firms, including Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco, Siemens, SK Telecom, Motorola, Nokia Siemens Network, as well as Vietnamese major companies, VinaPhone, MobiFone and VDC, will showcase their hi-tech applications and services like broad-band Internet and satellite connections.

Addressing a press briefing to announce the event in Hanoi on June 23, Director of the Centre for Information and Public Relations of the Vietnam Post and Telecom Group (VNPT) Bui Quoc Viet said that despite the global economic crisis, Vietnam Comm and Vietnam Electronics 2009 has still received an enthusiastic response from domestic and foreign enterprises.

He added that the participation of many large groups from France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Taiwan, Canada, the US and China signifies that Vietnam has become an attractive telecom and electronics market for the rest of the world.

Also present at the press briefing, Country Manager of Orange France Telecom, Jacques Fulcrant, highly praised the rapid development of Vietnam ’s telecom sector in recent years and pledged to continue long-term business with Vietnam .

“France Telecom has always viewed Vietnam as a very promising market for new, sophisticated products, services and technologies. Our priority is to become the strategic partner of a telecom operator, so that Vietnamese customers can enjoy the same cutting edge services Orange customers enjoy worldwide,” Fulcrant said.

Conferences during the event will discuss opportunities and challenges in the period of economic crisis, e-government and processes for the development of the IT and telecom sector in the future, as well as the most advanced solutions for 3G mobile broadband and communications among modern enterprises.

According to VNPT, the IT and telecom sector has gained breakthrough development in recent years. In 2008, the sector took in a revenue of 5.4 billion USD and the country had 80 million mobile phone subscribers and 20.7 million people using the Internet.

It is widely forecast that Vietnam will soon become a prime market for the world telecom sector, generating an estimated total revenue of 10 billion USD by 2010./.