Mark Proctor - Former Telstra

Mark Proctor Former Business Development and Account Manager at Telstra   "We should always remember the history of the relationship between Australia and Vietnam. And in my case, Telstra and Vietnam, because that relationship is really worth a lot. We really should take advantage of that trust, and the knowledge we have of each other."

As well as celebrating 50 years of bilateral relations, 2023 also marked the 35th anniversary of the signing of a Business Cooperation Agreement between Australia and Vietnam to develop Vietnam’s telecommunication sector.

Australia was the first to invest in Vietnam, only 15 years after the war and when the country was just opening up – the US embargo was still in place. “It was very difficult for people to travel to Vietnam and it was very difficult to do business with Vietnam,” former Business Development and Account Manager at Telstra, Mark Proctor notes, “but Telstra was - with the support of the Australian and Vietnamese government - really a pioneer, really, quite a risk taker at that time.”

In 1988, there were only two telephone lines out of Vietnam. Working with VNPT, Australia’s Overseas Telecommunication Commission (OTC), now Telstra, started building Vietnam’s international telecommunications infrastructure and by the time the project ended in 2003, thousands of circuits had been built. Without that, Mark says, the economic growth in Vietnam would have been much slower.

Mark sees opportunities for future Australia-Vietnam collaboration in building the next generation of communications infrastructure, such optical fiber and subsea optical fiber, and also wants to continue to support the development of the ICT industry and the growth of the economy in Vietnam.

Mark – a fluent speaker of Vietnamese - retains a strong interest in the telecommunications relationship with Vietnam. This November, he arranged a reunion in Hanoi of former Telstra staff, together with people from the Vietnamese side of the business and the Ministry of Information and Communications who were involved back in the 1980s and 1990s, because he believes: “We should always remember the history of the relationship between Australia and Vietnam. And in my case, Telstra and Vietnam, because that relationship is really worth a lot. We really should take advantage of that trust, and the knowledge we have of each other.”