AEC Feed

Now that Laos has its own telecommunications satellite, Internet service costs should go down as providers will no longer have to pay rental fees to operators of other satellites, said Dr Phouluang Kanolath, director-general of the satellite project under the Telecommunications Department.
The government received LaoSAT-1’s in-orbit delivery and witnessed the opening of the Lao Asia-Pacific Satellite Company last week.
The Ministry of Posts and Telecommunication also expects higher-quality ICT service, which will cover areas in Laos that fibre-optic cables previously did not reach.
Phouluang said there were a lot of services that would be made possible by the satellite, such as easier communication between remote areas and central provinces or the capital, e-learning and e-medical services.
LaoSAT-1 was launched into space last November. – Vientiane Times

Salt producer gears |up for export market
Veunkham Salt Co in Xaythany district, Vientiane, is improving its management structure and product quality with a view to boosting exports.
In terms of product certification, the company has only had a salt-quality certificate from the Ministry of Health since it began operations back in 1996, managing director Bounthavy Chounlamany said.
Recognising the need for international certification, the company is now working towards the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) and International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) quality guarantees. These would give the company a competitive edge and allow expansion into the Asean and East Asian markets.
Bounthavy was certain that these certificates would enable the company to increase exports and said it would attempt to obtain these important industry standards next year. The company is working with international organisations to improve its operations and prepare for inspections that would monitor and certify product quality. – Vientiane Times

Smart farming promises |bright future
Ready-to-eat tomatoes and lettuce, grown without soil and consumed unwashed, are the future in Vietnam and people will soon have the chance to experience this form of “smart agriculture”.
This year, this IT-based agricultural project will experiment on growing high-value-added vegetables including medium-sized tomatoes and low-potassium leaf lettuce that will be the source of clean, ready-to-eat food.
The potassium content in this kind of lettuce is one-fifth that of lettuce grown in ordinary ways, making it suitable for diabetics and people who are on a diet.
Under an agreement between Fujitsu Limited and FPT Corporation signed in 2014, Fujitsu provided cloud services, equipment and expertise, and FPT facilitated the spread of information technology in the agricultural sector.
A 400-square-metre centre, comprising a greenhouse to cultivate tomatoes and a vegetable factory to grow lettuce, was set up at the Fruit and Vegetable Research Institute in Trau Quy town, Gia Lam district, Hanoi. – Viet Nam News

E-wallet firm wins 28m investment
M_Service JSC, a Vietnamese company that sells the MoMo (Mobile Money) service, has raised US$25 million (Bt870 million) from Standard Chartered Private Equity and $3 million from global investment bank Goldman Sachs.
But the company has not divulged how much of a stake it has sold to them or the price of the shares.
“Finding the right partners is important for MoMo,” said Pham Thanh Duc, the company’s CEO. “We are very pleased to announce Standard Chartered Private Equity has become MoMo’s strategic investor together with our existing shareholder and strategic investor Goldman Sachs, which previously invested $5.75 million in our company in 2013 and also participated in this round of equity financing. MoMo is Vietnam’s leading mobile e-wallet and over-the-counter remittance and payment platform, processing millions of transactions for a customer base of more than 2.5 million. – Viet Nam News