The internet has created a digital environment with individuals, organizations and businesses have been creating an online presence in the digital environment. The registration of a domain name is the first activity for many to establish an online presence.

Officially present on the world’s internet map in 1994, Vietnam has actively joined the international economic integration process, making a contribution to socio-economic development.

VNNIC (Vietnam Internet Network Information Center) says that after 30 years of development, Vietnam has more than 610,000 domain names with the suffix ‘.vn’, ranked second in ASEAN, 10th in Asia Pacific and 40th in the world.

However, only 25 percent of Vietnam’s businesses have registered to use the national domain name ‘.vn’, much lower than the 70 percent in developed countries.

Deputy Minister of Information and Communications Nguyen Huy Dung said the shift from a traditional business model to an online business model is a trend. 

The national domain name ‘.vn’ is the key to help Vietnamese businesses and business households build brands for their products and services, and develop online business in a professional, sustainable and reliable way, as well as develop the digital economy and society. 

Using the national domain name ‘.vn’ is also a way to contribute to the protection of national digital sovereignty in cyberspace.

VNNIC’s director Nguyen Hong Thang cited a recent survey as reporting that over 85 percent of people polled believe that websites with ‘.vn’ have superior reliability compared to websites with international domain names. 

The national domain name with ‘.vn’ has become an important indicator in terms of prestige and reliability of a website, which helps heighten brand identity for internet users in Vietnam.

The initiative 

MIC, in an effort to step up digital transformation and a digital government, economy and society, initiated the popularization of the domain name.

In mid-May 2024, MIC approved a program on helping people, enterprises and business households to have reliable and safe online presence with digital services using ‘.vn’ domain name in cities and provinces nationwide in the 2024-2025 period.

The program offers youth, business households and SMEs (small and medium enterprises) opportunities to have an online presence quickly with two special groundbreaking policies.

The first is a 2-year fee exemption for the use of BIZ.VN domain name and basic digital services, such as establishing websites and emails for newly set up businesses within one year, and for private business households. 

People aged 18-23 can enjoy a 2-year fee exemption of ID.VN domain name and basic digital services, such as setting up websites, online diary pages, and CVs when applying for jobs and emails. The policy aims to urge youth to quickly establish their online presence and contribute to digital society development.

National digital sovereignty

The concept of national territory refers to limited ​​space under the absolute and complete sovereignty of a country. National territory includes national land and national waters (internal waters, territorial waters) for countries with seas and national airspace. From a physical perspective, these factors contribute to establishing a country's territory.

According to MIC, the internet has been developing rapidly and has been deeply penetrating into economic, political and cultural life, thus making the world become flatter. In the global internet network space, defining national territory via physical factors as in the real world is impossible.

However, from the perspective of identification and transferred management rights to Internet resources, domain names with countries’ codes have the meaning of identifying and representing a country on the Internet map. ccTLD is the top-level domain name reserved for each country and territory according to the international standard of country code 'ISO-3166', in which ‘.vn’ is the top-level domain name for Vietnam.

When the country code domain name is integrated into the global Internet network, it carries the mission of establishing the presence and identification of the national 'territory' in the world’s internet map.

Thai Khang