Before 2008, less than half of schools in Vietnam had internet access. Less than three years later, Vietnam was one of the few countries to have internet coverage in 100% of schools nationwide.
“Since the classrooms have been connected to the internet, our lessons are no longer limited to textbooks. Teachers show videos and images on the computer for the whole class to watch, then guide us to compete in Math and English online. The best part is that we get to see many other regions that we previously only knew the names of and imagined,” Duong Cong Ky, a student at Huong Phung Primary School (Huong Hoa District, Quang Tri) excitedly told about his lessons.
Ky’s school, located on the Truong Son mountain range, is one of nearly 46,000 educational institutions provided with free high-speed internet access, part of the non-profit “School Internet” project launched by Viettel in 2008. The program has been running for nearly two decades.
The success of the program is also an important stepping stone for Viettel to implement support activities and promote the quality of education in the future, with the motto of using technology to create positive values for the community. More deeply, the School Internet also reflects Viettel's vision and viewpoint that investing in learning is investing in the future. In particular, children are the subjects of special concern.
Bringing the upstream closer to the downstream
At the time of its inception, school Internet was considered an unprecedented initiative in the world. Simply because not many businesses chose to prioritize social responsibility over profit. Although Viettel knew that bringing Internet connection to remote areas would certainly face many difficulties in infrastructure construction, it was still determined to cover 100% of schools in Vietnam with Internet.
During the period when the Internet was not yet popular, new users mainly used it to chat, read news or play online games, Viettel saw the power that network connection could create for the education sector.
With a click, anyone can learn anywhere, anytime. The knowledge base is endless and shared with everyone. The classroom will no longer be limited to four walls but will become a “borderless” classroom. Learning opportunities will become equal, not discriminated by circumstances, not separated by geographical distance.
According to a report published in July 2021 by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), an independent consulting and research firm of the Economist Group, countries with low levels of broadband connectivity have the potential to increase GDP by bringing the Internet to schools.
Specifically, if school broadband connectivity in a country increases by 10%, the GDP per capita of that country can increase by 1.1%. That partly shows that Viettel's decision to deploy the Internet to educational institutions early on is correct and has a long-term vision.
In addition to “carrying the network to the village”, over the years, Viettel has also supported hundreds of billions of VND for children. A typical example is the “For studious children” scholarship program, with the aim of realizing the dream of going to school for poor children who lack the conditions to go to school. To date, Viettel has awarded more than 200,000 scholarships with a total amount of more than 250 billion VND. The program is deployed down to the commune level, prioritizing areas with special difficulties. From 2021, Viettel will increase the scholarship level with a total budget of more than 40 billion VND/year.
Or the large-scale nationwide program “Waves and computers for children”, launched during the Covid-19 pandemic to help students without devices maintain online learning during the prolonged pandemic and social distancing. Viettel has donated 37,000 tablets with 4G SIM cards to students from poor and near-poor households in 8 provinces, with a total value of 96.2 billion VND.
Building a lifelong learning society
Supporting and helping to improve learning conditions for children is part of Viettel's efforts for the future generation. What is more important that Viettel wants to create is to build a lifelong learning society, promoting all factors that love self-learning and maintain long-term learning. In which, the core factor is to promote digital transformation in the education sector and the school Internet is the necessary lever. From the network, connecting devices, applications, and systems are deployed and upgraded, including transmission infrastructure, data processing infrastructure, and solutions to ensure information security for the education sector.
Since 2017, Viettel has started building an interconnected database in the education sector, from the Ministry level down to departments, offices, and schools. This is also the foundation to help form a comprehensive ecosystem, serving all needs of all subjects, from management level to teachers, parents, and students.
Some typical solutions include: Viettel Study social network and K12Online exam system (helping millions of users teach and learn online, look up learning materials in programs from primary to high school); Education Smartup educational platform and EduPortal electronic information portal (helping schools perform a series of tasks such as paying tuition fees, digital signatures, preparing questions, creating exam questions, electronic communication, competition assessment, reporting - statistics, electronic library)...
For teachers, having a digital education ecosystem helps them focus more on their professional work, by reducing many manual tasks such as marking, recording and entering scores... For students, learning and testing support solutions such as K12Online aim to enhance the learning experience, fostering the spirit of self-study. As for parents, they can monitor their children's progress and learning results at any time.
Major General Tao Duc Thang, Chairman and General Director of Viettel, once affirmed: “With the mission of popularizing the Internet, Viettel connects ultra-broadband by fiber optic cable to all schools, creating conditions for teaching and learning applications to explode. Not only providing connection infrastructure, Viettel is responsible for researching and developing technologies serving the education sector, providing applications and content, implementing the construction of a national database on education, implementing an electronic education system…”.
Thanks to its extensive and continuous contributions to the education sector, Viettel was recently honored by the world-famous magazine Fortune in the ranking of global enterprises that have changed the world. Participating for the first time, Viettel ranked 3rd, alongside many other famous names such as Space X, Walmart, Alibaba. The recognition contributes to affirming that Viettel's vision of "innovation for people" is correct and Viettel has followed the business principles associated with social responsibility.
