When Thomas and Lee Johnson left their native Vietnam in 1969, the country was wracked by a war that had killed their father and left its infrastructure in shreds. Now, 40 years later, the Johnson brothers want to be part of the effort to rebuild Vietnam, bringing the nation’s Internet access to a level that would almost surpass that of the United States. Their company, DotVN, has agreements with the government of Vietnam to sell domain names, install virtual fibers for wireless bandwidth, and build commercial data centers.

"What we wanted to do is to help the country of Vietnam," said Thomas Johnson, the company’s chairman and chief executive officer. "In a way we want to promote Vietnam, its people, the government, the resources and the ability to work with them."

Vietnam has the second fastest growing economy in the world behind China, thanks in large part to foreign direct investment that the government turned into stimulus packages. The country has 86 million people, about 70 percent of whom are under the age of 35. This quarter, according to a recent article on Bloomberg, the Vietnamese stock exchange was the best performer in Asia.

All these points make for an attractive business environment, which DotVN is hoping to tap early. But Thomas Johnson said his motives are not just about getting in on the ground floor of potential boom.

"Very few companies have been able to go into Vietnam and have been able to obtain such privileges," Thomas Johnson said. "We are Vietnamese American, we were born in Vietnam, we were educated abroad, and we had the desire to go back to Vietnam, to help the Vietnamese people. The government of Vietnam really wanted to look at us further to see what we could really do."

The brothers' father was killed in 1964, leaving their mother alone to raise six young boys. She later met and married Howard A. Johnson, an American civil engineer working in Vietnam. He adopted all the children and in 1969 brought them to San Diego. "We’re very blessed," Thomas Johnson said. "They gave us really great support and taught us the right way. That is, to do well by doing good."

Thomas and Lee founded a company called Hi-Tek Multimedia in 1999 and went to Vietnam to talk to the government about helping it use the Internet to advertise tourism. This was around the same time the United States was opening trade talks with the country.

The Johnsons impressed leaders in Hanoi, and soon they were expanding their scope to helping develop the country’s entire Internet infrastructure. Lee Johnson, who serves as DotVN's president and chief operating officer, even helped to craft Vietnam’s official Internet protocol.

"We’re seeing the market really develop," said Louis Huynh, DotVN’s executive vice president of operations and business development. He pointed out that Vietnam was recently ranked number one on the Global Retail Development Index, ahead of India, China and Russia.

"On our part, what we feel we need to do is try to find initiatives, try to find technologies, try to initiate projects that are going to continue to buttress and support and encourage that growth in the technology sector."

Vietnam’s government is a socialist democratic republic, which means there is a level of censorship on Internet access, and certain restrictions on doing business. But according to Huynh, the censorship is less strict than in neighboring China, and the country is "in the midst of opening up the economic landscape."

Vietnam joined the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) in 2006 and the World Trade Organization in 2007. The country has a 2010 deadline to meet its WTO requirements. Johnson said the government is hopeful that if it can meet all the requirements, companies will begin flooding into the country. Some companies have already made inroads into Vietnam, including Intel Corp. (Nasdaq: INTC), taking advantage of the country’s cheap but educated work force. According to Johnson, the literacy level in Vietnam is more than 90 percent.

Still, DotVN is one of the earlier international companies to make ties there. There are about 16 companies providing domain names in Vietnam, but DotVN holds the only license that allows them to sell domain names online with a credit card, or from outside Vietnam. The number of registered domain names in Vietnam has skyrocketed in recent years, as the number of Internet cafés and personal computers in the country has jumped as well.

DotVN has two offices in Vietnam, both staffed with local workers. The Vietnamese government also asked the company to promote the ".vn" domain, hence the name change from Hi-Tek Multimedia to DotVN. Technically, Hi-Tek Multimedia is now a wholly owned subsidiary of DotVN.

In addition to selling domain names, the company also has contracts to install virtual fibers, which will allow for better Internet access. The virtual fibers can transmit up to five miles, reduce cost, and are actually better than what is often used in the United States.

"There’s a big opportunity for Vietnam to leverage new and cutting-edge technology to build out its infrastructure, as opposed to being wedded to older technology," Huynh said. In addition to this, DotVN has land a contract to build tier three data centers, which have very high security standards. Johnson said he believes these will be the first commercial tier three data centers in the country, and DotVN has worked with the Vietnamese Internet Network Information Center (VNNIC), the agency that manages the Internet, to design them.

The data centers will be remote, meaning DotVN can use them to provide Web services to other countries, not just Vietnam.

DotVN is currently trading over the counter on the Bulletin Board at about 50 cents per share. Johnson said their goal is to ultimately trade on the Nasdaq and the Vietnamese Stock Exchange. The company is partnering with other companies to develop a "Parking Page" program for customers, where someone can put click ads on an unused domain name in order to generate revenue.

The company charges between $100 and $200 to register a domain name, and that is bringing in revenue to the company.

"We’ve been growing approximately 30 percent these past years," Johnson said. "We think that we can definitely increase a lot more in the next several years through several new technologies."

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