During a workshop at the Council of Ministers’ building in Phnom Penh, foreign and domestic experts also warned that Cambodia was not immune to malicious attempts to spread viruses and steal information.

In the last few years, several websites of government and private websites were hacked. By the way, Cambodia has no legislation specifically related to cyber crimes.

It is noticed that several ASEAN nations have already enacted specific laws on the issue. Even though, there is no specific law to tackle computer-based offenses in Cambodia, such crimes are to some extent recognized by Article 427 to 430 of the Crime Code covering information and computer technology.

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Prakash Rao, Cambodia business development manager, was quoted by the Post as saying that five of the country’s nine telecommunications providers- Qb, Hello, Metfone, Smart Mobile and Starcell- having signed up, and two more are close to signing. He added that the company is in talks and conducting tests with a few of the country’s 28 banks.

MobilityOne company is the holding company of an established group of companies based in Malaysia, namely MobilityOne Sdn Bhd (MobilityOne Malaysia), Netoss Sdn Bhd (Netoss) and PT MobilityOne Indonesia (collectively known as “Group”) in the business of providing e-commerce infrastructure payment solutions and platforms through their proprietary MoCS and ABOSSE technology solutions.

The Group has developed an end-to-end e-commerce solution which connects various service providers across several industries such as banking, telecommunication and transportation through multiple distribution devices such as EDC terminals, SMS, ATMs, and Internet banking.

Those working with MobilityOne’s Cambodian subsidiary had a customer base of about 300,000, said Prakash Rao.

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Recently, the fibre-optic telecommunications networking linking Cambodia with other Greater Mekong Sub-region countries in order to increase speed of communication began operation worth USD17.6 million.

It is a part of the GMS Information Superhighway project, the latest links were built by Chinese telecommunications equipment supplier Huawei Technologies for a total of USD17.6 million. And the links have a network capacity of 2.5 gigabytes per second.

The new 651-kilometre transaction line to Laos will speed up Cambodia’s communication by linking the country to a regional backbone already connecting Thailand, China, Vietnam and Laos.

The fibre-optic networking is stretching from Kampong Cham to the Laos border along National Raod 7, and from Skum city in Kampong Cham province to Siem Reap along National Road 6, work laying the new cable wrapped up in Jully 2009.

It will help improve conditions for people living in the GMS countries, increase telecommunication speeds and push an economic boon in Cambodia. In addition, it will help increase national income by promoting development of ICT, exchanging new technology and information and transmit voice, video, data and internet traffic widely to the world at an acceptable price.

So Khun, Minister of Posts and Telecommunications, said that the construction was financed by a soft loan from China’s state-owned Export-Import Bank, and that the new network was under the control of Telecom Cambodia and Enterprise Telecom Laos, reported the Post.

In December 2004, China initiated the establishment of the GMS Information Superhighway project which the memorandum of understanding was signed by the six regional nations. And the work on the latest line began at the end of 2007.

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Adisai Soonthornratanarak told the Post that the decision to move away from competing solely on price was made in the second quarter of 2010, following the implementation of a government prakas, or edict, which set minimum levels for tariff plans last year.

Admitting that the company “struggled” in the wake of government regulations, he said the firm has now rethought its approach to competing in the Kingdom’s crowded mobile sector.

“The price war is going nowhere. Even now, no one is admitting they lose money, but most of us do. If we just jump into the price war, we don’t know where it will end,” he said.

“Differentiating yourself is the key to success. We believe people have different lifestyles, different roles in life,” he added.

Mfone is now tailoring SIM packages to different segments of society. On Saturday, the company announced the soft launch of a new SIM card.

The Serenade Mekong SIM offers a flat rate of US$0.18 a minute for travellers roaming through Cambodia, Laos, and Thailand through agreements with other companies owned by parent firm Thaicom.

Marketed towards businessmen, it is slated to become available later this month. Mfone hopes to attract 50,000 customers to the premium SIM by the end of the year.Mfone has previously released a SIM focused on Cambodia’s 100,000-strong ethnic Chinese community and seperate SIMs targeted at teens and rural people.

“If we do this well, we can reach target of over a million subscribers by the end of the year,” the CEO said.

Mfone’s Cambodian subscriber base fell 28 percent for the first quarter of this year, compared to 2009, according to May statistics issued by majority owner Thaicom. Mfone lost US$1.01 million operating in the Kingdom during the first three months this year, compared to a $3.14 million profit for the same period in 2009, according to Thaicom.

Government figures released in May estimated that Mfone is Cambodia’s fourth-largest mobile provider by subscriber base.

Source: The Phnom Penh Post

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The phone provider is allowing users to top up at ANZ Royal’s ATMs in Phnom Penh, a press release stated. The service is also provided by market leader Mobitel, a spokeswoman said.

“This is part of our strategy to offer to our subscribers multiple ways of recharging their accounts,” stated Smart Mobile CEO Thomas Hundt, in an email Monday.

The move is the latest within the Kingdom’s highly competitive telecoms sector to team up with the banks to offer increasingly diverse services and reach new customers. Smart Mobile, together with Hello and Mfone, already work with ANZ subsidiary Wing Cambodia to provide mobile banking – a service that enables people to transfer money via text message.

Mobitel, owned by the Royal Group, is in the process of launching its own mobile-banking initiative called VLOAD, under development with Refresh Mobile.

According to Hundt, cooperating with the banking sector can offer mobile customers more convenient ways to interact with the firm.

“Cambodia’s banking sector is developing fast. More and more people have bank accounts and make their transactions through banks,” he wrote.

The company is developing further links with the banking sector, after offering a similar service with ACLEDA bank since September 2009.

“We are already in progress of implementing the scheme with more banks. Contracts with two more banks have concluded already and under implementation, and we are looking beyond that for more banks to work with,” Hundt wrote.

ANZ Royal Bank also praised the agreement reached with Smart Mobile.

“We are proud to provide our customers with another convenient service, helping to bring more international banking standards to Cambodia,” ANZ Royal Bank CEO Stephen Higgins stated in the press release.

Smart Mobile customers can top up at ATMs in Tuol Kok, the riverside area, Olympic Stadium, Pet Loksang, Phsar Doem Thkov, Stung Meanchey, Toeuk Thla, Chaom Chao, Takhmao and Chbar Ampov.

Source: The Phnom Penh Post

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The telecoms sector lost its status as top marketing spender to the beverage sector, and a total of US$20.3 million was spent on advertisements nationwide during the first quarter of 2010, a study by Indochina Research Ltd (IRL) found.

This was some 33 percent more than the same period 2009, but remained 3 percent below 2008 levels.

“There appears to be an air of positivity about the economy and the future, which may very well be driving this,” wrote Anthony Polovenio, general manager at the Cambodian branch of regional marketing firm River Orchid, on Wednesday. He confirmed he has seen “positive signs” for advertising revenue in the first quarter, though he declined to release his firm’s figures.

The IRL report cited burgeoning television marketing expenditures as the key driver of growth. Television spending grew 43 percent, as research pegged the cost of a television advertising spot at $156 for the quarter, an increase of $42 over the same period last year. Advertisers, however, reduced spending in print media by 16 percent.

“Despite the financial turmoil, the advertising market has performed better thanks to the rise of TV advertising budgets in key sectors of activity,” the report concluded.

The beverage industry overtook the telecommunications sector to become the largest spender on advertising, according to the report, at $3.48 million, 38 percent more than last year. Telecommunications firms financed $2.93 million in print and television marketing this year, 20 percent less compared to last year.

Officials at Phnom Penh-based advertising firm Orange People said the firm witnessed a relative decline in the level of spending by telecommunications firms, as their business models changed.

“Whatever the [new] model is, it is affecting the advertising industry very much,” CEO Nathaniel Chan said Wednesady. He expects consolidation among the nine mobile operators in the Kingdom.

“If [smaller telecommunications firms are] not going to be there any more, obviously there will be a chunk of revenue leaving the country,” he said.

He added that an exodus by the smaller telecoms players would disproportionately affect smaller agencies, as many larger companies signed marketing contracts with firms based abroad.

Chan also said that advertising in nontraditional media was growing, and that concerts his firm hosted in the countryside often drew 20,000 to 30,000 people.

“A lot of clients are opening up to these [new] ideas. In Cambodia, that’s radical advertising,” he said.

But Polovenio expects telecommunications advertising expenditures to grow.

“As the market grows in both knowledge and sophistication I think we’ll see new strategies being adopted to ensure marketing budgets are utilised accordingly,” he added.

IRL’s survey was restricted to TV and print. Ad spend was based on nominal rate cards.

Source: The Phnom Penh Post

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Authorities consider online gaming a form of gambling, and therefore illegal in Cambodia, Ministry of Interior spokesman Khieu Sopheak confirmed Tuesday.

This week CIDC-IT’s major competitor, Vietnam-based VTC Online, announced it has suspended the release of its first Cambodian title, Audition, until the legality of gaming centres is confirmed.

CIDC-IT says users of its first computer game title, Justice X Wars II (JXII), increasingly played from home even before police shuttered up to 300 gaming centres earlier this year.

“The transition of players playing from home [instead] of using game centres and internet cafes started in the third quarter of 2009,” Gaertner told the Post this week via email.

Though declining to give the exact figure, CIDC-IT said it has made “substantial investment” to bring AK to the Cambodian market.

AK is a first-person shooter game similar in scope to the popular international title Counterstrike.

Although a release date for the online game has not been set, it has been undergoing testing since April 1.

Once closed testing is complete, the next step will be testing the game among the general population, Gaertner said.

Gaertner said: “The main issue is not how many want to play, as how many can play,” as the new title will require a more modern system to play.

Last month, CIDC-IT launched a number of internet-based services that range from locally tailored chat rooms to social networking and entertainment services under the Sabay brand name.

Chy Sila, CIDC-IT chief executive officer, added earlier this week: “I want people to see more people having computers to get online … when they go back home.”

The service provider has recently started, for the first time, offering low budget computer netbooks with three-month free internet packages to attract users, with young consumers as its main target.

Source: The Phnom Penh Post

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Minster of Posts and Telecommunications So Khun told a dozen business representatives the ministry will not compel Cambodian companies to use a central Domestic Internet Exchange (DIX), the attendee said.

Instead, the source said, So Khun told the representatives and about 30 MPTC officials that Internet connections can be routed through any exchange that Internet service providers (ISPs) see fit.

“We are pleased and relieved,” said the source, a member of the private sector who requested anonymity late Monday. “It seems our worst fears are not going to happen.”

“This was coming from the minister himself,” the source said. “It is very good news.”

MPTC had wanted to charge private companies to route all domestic traffic through a monopoly managed by the state-run Telecom Cambodia (TC), a move that private interests worried had the potential to crush the burgeoning sector.

Leading businessmen have voiced fears over the last two months that centralising the Kingdom’s Web provision could put US$500 million worth of infrastructure at risk, hand control of connectivity pricing to the state, stymie international investment and effectively end the Kingdom’s open ICT market.

Private sector representatives have said the plan may have been suggested to shore up TC finances ahead of the opening of Cambodia’s securities exchange, a claim TC officials denied.

Instead, TC leaders said the hub plan was to give the ministry more control over Web content.

MPTC’s decision Monday is an apparent backtrack from a plan that the ministry’s director general, Moa Chakrya once detailed to the Post.

Moa Chakrya could not be reached for comment late Monday.

However, the attendee said Monday that ministry officials denied floating the plan as definitive and said the organisation had instead only been formulating ideas.

Private sector officials were also criticised for speaking to the media, the source said.

Moving forward, the attendee said, MPTC suggested that exchange providers would need licences to operate. It was not clear how these would be enforced or set out.

The government’s issue of overlapping frequency licences to ISPs was also discussed. But a resolution, the source said, had yet to be reached.

Source: The Phnom Penh Post

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Over the next three years, 20 pilot “telecentres” will be set up in the provinces of Siem Reap, Banteay Meanchey, Kampong Cham and Kampong Thom to provide remote communities with a hub where they can access the Web to improve farming methods.

Government adviser Dr Roger Harris told the Post Monday that access to such information could help farmers decide which crops to grow and which pesticides to use, and help them understand how to add value to their goods or find the best markets to sell them.

“At each stage of production, information has a real part to play,” said Harris, who has 12 years of experience working with similar projects in Vietnam, India and Malaysia.

Together with Hum Sophon, managing director of the Cambodia Village Phone Company, Harris is in the process of analysing where and how to introduce telecentres.

The information hubs can cost as little as a few hundred dollars, for a basic computer centre, and up to US$15,000 for a state-of-the-art complex. Advisors for the programme hope the centres will run like franchises, with private investors running a profitable centre that won’t need funding when the project ends.

The $3.6 million scheme is being funded as part of Asian Development Bank’s (ADB) wider project to improve the Tonle Sap basin. Danish engineering consultancy NIRAS, which is working with the Ministry of Agriculture and the National ICT Developments Authority (NiDA), will coordinate the effort.

The team will face challenges along the way. One major question is how to create computer centers in un-electrified communities, where connectivity is limited.

Harris said computers could be connected to the Web via satellite, using Very Small Aperture Terminals (VSATs). VSATs are so compact they can be carried in backpacks, but they can provide communities with wireless connections to the Internet. Solar panels and generators could power the computers, Harris said.

“But providing access is only one part of the story,” he said, speaking at his office in the Ministry of Agriculture. “The other half is making the Internet relevant to the average Cambodian farmer.

“We want to make telecentres sustainable,” he said. “They cannot survive by providing agricultural information alone.”

Project advisors hope that in the long run telecentres can help provide resources to aid rural education, health and enterprise development. Dr Harris pointed out that, in the future, local clinics could use telecenters to connect with major hospitals to provide remote diagnosis for hard-to-reach communities.

If the pilot projects prove successful, 80 centres will be rolled out nationwide. This would set up Cambodia to follow other Asian nations, such as India, where rural telecenters are widespread.

The Internet may not be the only solution to passing knowledge on to communities. Spreading information through community radio stations and the television could also help disseminate farming knowledge.

China’s ministry of agriculture, for example, broadcasts programmes about farming, Harris said. But whether such a scheme will be implemented in Cambodia is unclear.

“We are at the early stages of the project,” he said.

Director General of the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunication, Moa Chakrya, said at a conference last week that studies on Internet access are also being carried out in northern and western provinces of Cambodia.

Source: The Phnom Penh Post

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Hundreds of participants joined the World Expo, which will run for three days on Phnom Penh’s Diamond Island, where government representatives outlined plans for development, and members of the private sector presented their products and services.

Director General of the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications (MPTC), Mao Chakrya, emphasised the need for Cambodia to boost domestic Internet traffic and develop submarine network links.

“I hope over the next two years we will bring down the cost of Internet access and other services,” he said.

The importance of effective regulation was also emphasised.

Moa Chakrya outlined plans to create a separate regulator for the sector, which is currently overseen by MPTC, while audience members emphasised the importance of passing laws on copyright and e-commerce to boost private sector development.

The conference comes just two days after the Asian Development Bank (ADB) reviewed US$1 million worth of technical assistance for the government to develop its telecommunications policy.

In a report on it Web site, the ADB emphasised the need for a telecommunications law – now in the pipeline – which “will play a useful role in resolving commercial disputes with little need for regulatory intervention.”

The ADB said the government needed “different sections” of the MPTC to improve “transparency, efficiency, policy, regulation and ownership interest in Telecom Cambodia”.

Relations between the private sector and MPTC have been strained in recent months, with Internet service providers (ISPs) voicing united dissatisfaction over the issuance of overlapping frequency licences and plans to centralise Internet traffic through a state-run hub.

However, the conference proved an opportunity to address the issue. During the meeting, MPTC expressed a willingness to work with the private sector to overcome disputes.

“We have consulted with operators now and will work on a plan to bring the issue for proposal,” said Mao Chakrya.

Some ISP representatives believe the centralisation plan will stifle the private sector, and on Thursday they submitted their views to Minister of Finance Keat Chhon.

Conference discussions also highlighted the potential for development and investment in the IT and telecoms sector.

“Look at the recent history of Cambodia and you will see people who don’t hold degrees from universities such as Harvard or Yale, but people who were at the right place at the right time and can spot opportunities,” said Phu Leewood, secretary general of the National ICT Development Authority (NiDA).

Members of a discussion panel that included IBM’s Steven Deskovic and Beeline’s Gael Campan highlighted potential areas of growth in the next five years, especially in rural and youth markets.

Source: The Phnom Penh Post

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