U.S., Vietnam Will Reopen Phone Lines

Vietnamese and U.S. representatives signed a memorandum Thursday on reopening telecommunication lines severed since the end of the Vietnam War.

The memorandum signed by Vietnam’s state telecommunications company and the American Telephone & Telegraph Co. paves the way for the first link since the U.S.-backed South Vietnamese government fell to Communist forces from the north in 1975.

The link will help speed up normalization of ties, James Hansen, AT&T;’s managing director for Southeast Asia, told reporters after the signing in Hanoi with Vietnam’s Directorate General of Posts and Telecommunications.

Washington severed relations with Hanoi and imposed economic sanctions decades ago and extended the measures to a reunified Vietnam in 1975.

Washington decided Monday to lift the ban on telecommunications links with Vietnam in response to what it called positive efforts by Hanoi in accounting for U.S. servicemen missing from the war and in bringing peace and free elections to neighboring Cambodia.

Officials said that limited service would begin in a few days, with full service and higher capacity in a few weeks.

Vietnamese spokesman Nguyen Ngo Hong said that initially the two companies will provide 210 telephone circuits, 60 of them from Hanoi to France via satellite and through an undersea cable network to the United States.

The other 150 circuits will connect the United States by satellite with Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam’s commercial hub, known as Saigon until the fall of the South Vietnamese government.

Even though the United States has forbidden the practice, in the last few years people in Vietnam have been able to call the United States by transferring calls through Sydney, Australia, or Tokyo. It is still virtually impossible to call Vietnam from the United States.

To call Vietnam directly from the United States, AT&T; instructs callers to dial the international access number 011, then the country code for Vietnam, 84, then the city code and the telephone number. The city code for Hanoi is 4, and Ho Chi Minh City is 8. Rates will range from $2.41 to $2.91 for the first minute, and from $1.77 to $2.60 for each additional minute.