HÀ NỘI — Northern Phú Thọ Province and telecom group Viettel on Thursday signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to build a smart city in the region in the 2017-20 period.

Under the MoU, Viettel will focus on building a smart city focusing on healthcare, education, public administration and tourism, connecting to the festival city at the earliest.

Over the past few years, Viettel’s branch in the province has effectively co-operated and implemented telecom services and information application in the locality, including connecting the database for 305 healthcare and treatment units and launching social healthcare insurance system management for all hospitals. It has also organised health checkups for more than 30,700 people in Yên Lập District, besides offering free high-speed Internet service to 916 schools in the province.

Bùi Minh Châu, chairman of the provincial People’s Committee, affirmed the important role of the information application and development for growth.

The province is expected to promote IT application for socio-economic development, increasing its competitiveness in international integration, and thus accelerating industrialisation and modernisation.

Nguyễn Mạnh Hùng, Viettel’s general director, said the group had the advantage of having an extensive telecom infrastructure nationwide and abundant human resources of 4,000-5,000 people in the ICT sector with a high degree of professionalism. It had also created many solutions and products, such as Bankplus, Moffice, Shop.one and Smas, as well as sms.edu, hospital management software and social healthcare insurance system management.

“Viettel is confident about supporting the province to build a successful smart city,” he said, adding that the two sides would quickly prepare action plans and specify the MoU’s contents.

It is expected that Viettel would complete and bring into operation smart city applications in chosen sectors in the second quarter.

Phú Thọ Province is the eighth locality to sign a MoU with Viettel to build their smart cities following Thái Nguyên, Phú Yên, Hải Dương and Huế, as well as Bình Phước, Hưng Yên and Đà Nẵng.

During the earlier period, Viettel built some systems for smart cities, such as providing Wi-Fi to famous tourism destinations. — VNS