A rural Vietnamese fishing village is getting 2Mbps/512kbps wireless broadband connectivity thanks to a public/private effort in the country to shore up broadband coverage gaps. Ta Van, a small village located in Vietnam's northern Lao Cai province, now has a wireless network that incorporates both WiMax and Wi-Fi, and links users to a Shin Corp.'s IPSTAR satellite.

While politics have bogged down efforts to craft a U.S. policy to address rural broadband here, the rural Vietnam push is the work of a coalition featuring Intel, Vietnam Data Communication Company and the U.S. Agency for International Development. The area being unwired is one of Vietnam's poorest regions, and WiMax was first deployed in the province of Lao Cai to help aid rural farmers there.

"While many in Lao Cai do not own WiMAX phones or home computers, they can use this equipment at schools or community centers," notes the State Department website. "Ten schools already host technology training centers, where students log on to computers to learn technology skills from a curriculum designed by Microsoft."

In the U.S., Sprint is eyeing WiMax as a competitive panacea, while AT&T is eyeing the technology simply as a rural stopgap measure. In Lao Cai, the average income is around $50 U.S. per month -- mostly from tourism. The second phase of that region's WiMax trial has just begun. More detail on the project is available at the USAID website.