Cambodia
By Qmars Safikhani
Telecom market
 According
to the latest figures from figureSeeq, the current
Cambodian mobile market is so advanced as to clearly
reflect the future of telecom coverage in many other,
supposedly more developed, countries. Furthermore,
the number of mobile phone subscribers are nearly
twice as high as fixed line subscribers, which make
the country is one of most advanced countries in the
world from this perspective.
This disparity is the result of several factors,
but possible the biggest single contributing factor
was the lack of fixed line penetration in the first
place. Several years of civil war largely destroyed
the country infrastructure, and given that the majority
of Cambodians live in rural areas, the wireless market
had a perfect growth opportunity. Several other factors
were allied to this:
- The telecom market’s openness
toward competition
- Foreign investment in the telecom
infrastructure. Billing is also in US dollars to
minimise exchange rate risk.
- The gap between the cost of
connection and the monthly fees of fixed and mobile
phones
- The low cost of equipment and
handsets (as low as USD 20) from neighbouring countries,
such as South Korea
- The popularity of pre-paid access
as most Cambodians could not afford or qualify for
subscription access. This eliminates risk of subscriber
default for the operator.
* Based on the pre-paid contract
The majority of Cambodians have little use for text
messaging or data services at the moment. Literacy
levels in the country are amongst the lowest in the
region. The main operators (Camshin and Mobitel) have
indicated that although mobile penetration is steadily
growing, they are likely to leapfrog the GPRS system
and upgrade their network systems ready for 3G, as
there is little demand for data services now.
Internet market
However, the reliance on mobile service provision
has impacted badly on the Internet market. Cambodia
has some of the highest Internet costs in the world
and the highest in the region (table 2). The high
cost (5 cents per minute), lack of national Internet
exchange (an e-mail sent by one subscriber of Comnet
to BigPond must exit the country and transit through
a third country), small number of public access points,
ban on the use of VoIP by telecom authorities and
low level of PC penetration are the main reasons behind
the low profile of Internet penetration in Cambodia.
As a consequence, the Internet penetration in the
country is one of the lowest in the region.
MPTC (Ministry of Posts Telecommunications Company),
acts as the local regulator and policy maker, and
main player in the country and there are only four
ISPs: Camnet., Big Pond, Camintel and TeleSurf.
With market liberalisation Mobitel the largest telecom
operators has started to provide broadband services.
The number of broadband subscribers is about 2000,
mainly SMEs. The main broadband access technology
for the country is symmetric satellite technology.
For further information about Cambodia and another
82 countries please contact Qmars Safikhani at qmars.safikhani@teleconomy.com
Table2: Average dial-up Internet access cost
Table3: Mobile, landlines and PC growth
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