The new service “Easy Fill” makes its subscribers easier to choose any amount they would like to top up from 50 cents up to $500. And this service is limited to only 11 provinces at present.

Beeline subscribers are able to receive service “Easy Fill” from Beeline sales offices located in 11 provinces: Phnom Penh, Siem Reap, Sihanoukville, Battambang, Kampong Cham, Kandal, Kampot, Prey Veng, Kampong Chhnang, Kompong Thom and Banteay Mean Chey.

After launch in May 2010, the Beeline distribution network in Cambodia was already comprised of 11 sales offices, more than 6,400 scratch card points of sales and more than 100 branded trade countries across 21 provinces.

Therefore, Beeline subscribers have two options to top up their credit either scratch card or a new mobile service “Easy Fill”. By the way, mobile top-up service of “Easy Fill” is more convenient because customers only have to say what amount they want to top up and denominations start as low as 50 cents.

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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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Conflict between two phone operators has yet to be solved and Beeline is still the subject of a $2.5 million suit currently before Phnom Penh Municipal Court- $1.5million in damages and $1million compensation to Mobitel.

Beeline’s General Director- Gael Campan, said that the relation between the two phone operators were back to normal after Mobitel filed a lawsuit against Beeline last year.

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The two companies which are distributing Sony-branded products in Cambodia are K4 group and Sunsimexco.

Canice Koh, senior executive for Sony Singapore’s home audio-visual product marketing department, was quoted by the Post as saying that the technology is the first of its kind to be marketed in the Kingdom.

Spencer Low, senior manager of market department for Sony Singapore, said: “For the next couple of years, [the market] seems pretty rosy, according to the Post.

“We feel consumers in Cambodia will move toward our [high-end] target market segment.”

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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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The loan covers the Royal Group’s November purchase of Luxembourg-based Millicom International Cellular SA’s network operations in the Kingdom for $346 million. The acquisitions included a 58.4 percent holding in Mobitel, Royal Telecom International Co Ltd and Cambodia Broadcasting Service Co Ltd.

The debt-leveraged deal is thought to have given the Royal Group 100 percent ownership of Mobitel in an agreement lead-arranged by ANZ bank.

The loan also refinances debt, including a $100 million loan arranged by International Finance Corporation in 2008.

Royal Group Chief Financial Officer Mark Hanna said Thursday that the loan sell down was “standard procedure” in the acquisition, “the biggest of its kind ever done in the region”.

Highlighting the fact that a Cambodian group was able to buy out a majority stake from a major international company, Hanna said: “It really increases the exposure that Cambodia gets.”

He added that the assets bought from Millicom form “a central part” of the Royal Group’s plans for the future.

A spokeswoman for ANZ, which is book-running and arranging the sell down together with Standard Bank, said via email from Singapore Thursday that the loan was put out for syndication on Monday.

Responses are due in the last week of April this year, she said. Lenders have been invited to join at five ticket levels, Reuters reported Thursday, paying interest of as much as 14.73 percent.

“According to Thomson Reuters LPC data, only eight syndicated loans have been completed in Cambodia, and this facility is the country’s biggest-ever corporate deal,” the ANZ spokeswoman added.

The Royal Group partnered global telecoms company Millicom for a total of 14 years.

After a strategic review of its South-East Asia assets, Millicom decided to sell its holding to its joint partner. On announcing the then prospective deal last August, Mikael Grahne, CEO of Millicom, said in a press release: “We are very proud of having played an important role in the development of the leading mobile operator in Cambodia and are very confident of the continued success of Mobitel and its people within the Royal Group.”

Millicom also approved the sale of its Laotian operations to Russia’s JSC Vimpel-Communications (VimpelCom) for $65 million. Moscow-based Vimpelcom is the parent company of Beeline, the newest entrant to Cambodia’s crowded market for mobile-phone service. It announced last week that it had garnered more than 370,000 active subscribers in the Kingdom since its launch last May.

Last week, Huawei Technologies, China’s largest private hi-tech enterprise, signed a $200 million cooperation agreement with Mobitel to extend its network.

Source: The Phnom Penh Post

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By Sunday, all nine mobile phone companies had raised their per-minute rates to meet a standard cost mandated by the ministries of Finance and of Telecommunications, which they said was necessary to prevent a price war.

Costs for Cambodian consumers is now $0.05 to $0.06 per minute, a jump from some of the promotional offers of newer phone companies, some as low as nothing.

Analysts say the ministerial directive is contrary to the investment law and the policies of a free economy, but they are not willing to push further to learn how it might impact consumers and the market.

“If you speak against something, you will be considered as an attacker from an opposition party,” said Chan Sophal, head of the Cambodian Economic Association, an organization of 60 economists. “The bad environment makes these intellectuals not brave enough express themselves.”

Some 500 Cambodian economists can be find working at government institutions, in civil society and for international finance agencies. But few ever seek to intervene in government economic policies, unlike economists in neighboring countries like Thailand and Vietnam.

Chan Sophal said the government is not open to comments on its economic policies. The telecom price floor, for example, was implemented silently, and only by ministry officials, without public debate, he said.

“As independent economists, we want to provice recommendations,” said Chheng Kimlong, an economics professor at the University of Cambodia. “But we can only talk and our suggestions will not be considered.”

“Especially, the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications was known to be careless of other suggestions, but they will issue any directive without accepting any recommendations,” he said.

Government officials reject such accusations.

Telecom Minister So Khun said his ministry had consulted with “many” experts before issuing the directive, though he would not elaborate or name them.

“We welcome all [suggestions], but we can’t answer whether the suggestions can be considered positive or negative,” he said. “My team will check and tell them what to do.”

Thun Saray, president of the rights group Adhoc, said the government remains prickly in the face of criticism from independent organizations—a disservice to economic development.

Ros Khemara, another member with the Cambodian Economic Association, said that in order to be professional, economists should make sure they extensively research. This is hard to do, he said, if they know their results will be ignored by the government.

Business lawyers, too, can find the environment challenging, said Ly Tay Seng, president of HBS Law Firm and Consultants.

“There are not many lawyers who want to express their opinion against the government, because they are worried it will impact their business,” he said.

Source: VOA Khmer

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Gary Foo, Hello’s Brand Manager, was quoted by the Post as saying that “we’ve seen encouraging take up of our Blackberry in the past couple of months and we would like to continue to capitalize on this trend.”

He added that the Cambodian smartphone market was expanding as mobile users in the Kingdom increasing take up more sophisticated handsets.

Following launching Blackberry at the end of April, 2009, Phone operator launched the first 3G Bold handset in the July.

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InSTEDD’s mission is to harness the power of technology to improve the collaboration for the global health and humanitarian action. The organization was originally funded by leading search engine Google and works internationally, with its largest projects currently in Southeast Asia, a hotbed for disease outbreaks that can spread worldwide.

This is the first time in Cambodia a deployment of this kind has happened and sets a precedent for how local communication providers can partner to bring to scale successful mobile solutions with a social impact and with a view to long-term sustainability. Along with Smart Mobile, InSTEDD looks to bring the best of technology to those who help to make local communities stronger, safer, and healthier.

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Nguyen Duy Tho was quoted by the Post as saying that “currently, we are testing 3G to prepare for an official launching of this service in 2010.”

Nguyen Duy Tho gave Viettel’s ambitious targets for Cambodia in the longer term. The Vietnamese operator is aiming to capture 40 percent of the overall mobile market, 80 percent of the broadband Internet market and 80 percent of the telecoms landline market, the paper continued.

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