Vietnam's biggest ISP is opening an office in Silicon Valley as part of a five-year push into the US, Europe and Japan. The Vietnamese Corporation for Financing and Promoting Technology (FPT) will offer services in banking technology, telecomms, the Web, ecommerce and business IT from its California office. It has plans to open at least one other office in the US and one in Canada, employing around 160 Vietnamese programmers, according to BBC Online. The company, which last year started business in India, aims to clock up a total of 14 offices worldwide by 2005. Vietnam is more recognised for software piracy than as a power in the technology arena, with Internet use relatively low among its 79 million-strong population. Last year the Business Software Alliance found that 97 per cent of business software installed during 1998 in Vietnam was done so illegally.®