Vietnam's economic growth is clearly outpacing its ability to get supporting infrastructure in place. The increasing traffic jams are evidence of the lack of highways and the need for mass transit alternatives. New housing developments and industrial parks are located out of the city along narrow country lanes that can't support the increased car and truck traffic.
Closer to home, the bandwidth available from our internet service provider, FPT, has been steadily decreasing over the past couple of months. I notice that a few of my neighbors now have computers, and they have probably hooked onto the network. As more and more neighbors buy computers and internet hookups, the service will continue to decline unless the service providers increase capacity. FPT seems to be slow in doing so.
Kevin over at the blog SaigonNezumi.com just wrote about his frustrations at the the lack of bandwidth in the same neighborhood over the past couple of days. I am thankful for his voice here because I was beginning to believe this was my problem. We had called FPT for service, and they came over and were mystified why we clearly had a connection to the internet, but could not bring up a webpage. They suggested that we needed to buy a new modem. If they are having widespread bandwidth problems, and I assume their other customers call for service, wouldn't they have the smarts to figure out they had a problem and were honest with their customers about the problem and what FPT planned to do about it? They either lack the smarts or are dishonest with their customers. Neither reason speaks well of the future of this company in a country that is becoming increasingly sophisticated about good service.