“Five years ago the Philippines was much, much more advanced, in front of Vietnam,” Zhao Houlin, deputy secretary general of the International Telecommunication Union, told AFP at a conference in Hanoi.

But Vietnam has narrowed the gap and in some IT areas, including usage and access, is “even more advanced than the Philippines,” Zhao said, speaking on the sidelines of the World Information Technology Forum.

He told the conference that Vietnam's development of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) -- including mobile and fixed-line telephones as well as Internet and broadband -- was outpacing other Asian countries.

“The ICT development in Vietnam over the last five years has advanced more rapidly compared with some of its neighbors,” he said.

Vietnam's Minister of Information and Communications, Le Doan Hop, told the conference that 25 percent of the country's population were Internet users.

“Today, the population of Vietnam even in the most remote areas, has good access to the Internet,” the minister said.

Zhao told AFP that Vietnam is “almost number one in the region” in terms of the speed of its IT development but that Thailand and Malaysia were still some distance ahead.

He said Indonesia lagged behind and, in comparison, “I think that now Vietnam is much, much more advanced.”

Vietnam is still a largely rural-based society whose per capita income is about US$1,000. It is rapidly modernizing and aims to become an industrialized nation by 2020.