Vietnamese domain name owners will have to pay an annual fee of VND20,000 (nearly US$1) for a domain name from January 1 next year.

A representative of the Vietnam Internet Network Information Centre (VNNIC) said the State and the Government were building a pure Vietnamese information environment on the internet, therefore, the fee collection was to support administrative management and technical system operations for Vietnamese domain names similar to traditional domain names, and not for commercial activities.

There are more than one million Vietnamese domain names registered on the system, of these, nearly 290,000 domain names have been put in use, he said.

According to the VNNIC’s 2016 Vietnamese internet resource report, 74 per cent of the total Vietnamese domain names are of individuals, while 24 per cent are of organisations.

In term of regions, the North makes up for more than half of the registered domain names, while the South’s registered domain names are 27 per cent. The Central region constitutes 19 per cent and overseas comprises one per cent. — VNS