Cambodia: Leveraging investment in

broadband infrastructure for national

development

Regional Meeting for the Asia-Pacific LDCs

Port Vila, Vanuatu - 26 October 2017

Views are those of the presenter and may not

necessarily reflect the opinions of UN-OHRLLS

Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 9C

“Significantly increase access to information and

communications technology and strive to provide universal

and affordable access to the Internet in least developed

countries by 2020”

$1.00 $2.77 $8.43 $9.22

0.9%

4.7%

10.6%

3.9%

Cambodia Rwanda Senegal Vanuatu

US$ % GDP pc

Cheapest in

the world

Affordability

500 MB monthly mobile Internet

Universality

Mobile population coverage

3rd in LDCs

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

Lesotho Rwanda Cambodia Vanuatu Senegal

2G 3G 4G/LTE

49 19 16 14 13 13 12 11 10 10 157 24 21 11 37 15 13 9 8 13 0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

Singapore Vietnam Malaysia Cambodia Thailand Brunei Phillipines Lao PDR Myanmar Indonesia

ASEAN speeds (Mbps, Sep. 2017)

Mobile Fixed So

urc

e: O

okla

0.3

0.8

3.0

Rwanda Senegal Cambodia

Data usage per mobile subscriber (GB per month,

2016)

Source: Main operator & estimates.

Cambodia success factors

• High level of competition

• Easy market entry

• FDI

• $

• No incumbent influence

• No spectrum auctions

• Limited regulation

Operator Frequency (MHz)

Launch date

Smart 1800/2100 Jan 2014

SEATel 850 July 2015

Viettel 1800 Nov 2015

CamGSM 1800 Nov 2015

Kingtel 2600 Jan 2016

4G-LTE Operators in Cambodia

33% use

mobile for

Internet

48% have

smart

phone

2016 96% own

mobile

phone

Kim

ch

ho

y P

hong, L

ihol S

rou

, an

d J

avie

r

Solá

. 20

16

. Mo

bile

Ph

on

es a

nd

Inte

rnet

Use

in C

am

bo

dia

20

16

. Th

e A

sia

Fo

un

da

tion, U

SA

ID a

nd

the

Op

en

Institu

te.

> Dozen fixed

ISPs

3 national fiber optic backbones

Cross-border connectivity to

Thailand & Vietnam

2 submarine cables in 2017

Core Internet

elements

.KH

F

Global cache

F

Internet use

R² = 0.5076

0

10

20

30

40

50

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

Inte

rne

t u

se

(%

of

po

pu

lati

on

)

Secondary school gross enrollment

Vanuatu Senegal

Rwanda

74% Bislama

64% English

(5+, 2009 Census)

71% Khmer

6% English

(7+, 2013 InterCensus)

49% Kinyarwanda

7% English

(15+, 2012 Census)

45% in at least 1 of 8 official

or national languages

37% French

(10+, 2013 Census)

Top 10 web sites

Rank Site Comment

1 Youtube.com User-submitted videos.

2 Google.com.kh Search engine

3 Google.com Search engine

4 Khmerload.com Entertainment website. Hosted abroad.

5 Sabay.com.kh Entertainment website. Hosted in Cambodia

6 Facebook.com Social network

7 Freshnewsasia.com Breaking news. Hosted in Cambodia.

8 Kbn-live.com Khmer Breaking News. Hosted abroad.

9 Pmhotnews.com Online lifestyle magazine. Hosted abroad.

10 Kohsantepheapdaily.com.kh Online newspaper. Hosted in Cambodia.

Adapted from https://www.alexa.com/topsites/countries/KH

74%

33%

30%

Entertainment (music,movies, etc.)

Cambodian news

Information on various topics(health, agriculture, etc.)

3 most important reasons for using Internet

Khmer since 2000

• 4th largest user in LDCs • Most ministries have page & communications

via FB messenger • Leading source of news

• Anecdotal stories of e-commerce (COD)

ICT & economy $

30

0

$3

10

$

32

0

$2

90

$

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$3

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$

31

0

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$

46

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59

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81

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$

96

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,14

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19

95

19

96

19

97

19

98

19

99

20

00

20

01

20

02

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03

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05

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06

20

07

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08

20

09

20

10

20

11

20

12

20

13

20

14

20

15

20

16

GNI per capita (US$)

Tourism:

80% of

service

exports

Garments:

78% of

goods

exports

Telecom:

US$520 m

(2.6% GDP)

2016

Telecom+

Computer

services:

12,173

workers

(0.7% of total)

2011

Investment

ICT as % of total ICT $ per capita

ICT ($ m) per percentage point

of mobile broadband coverage

Cambodia 19% $39 $9

Rwanda 74% $42 $5

Senegal 49% $129 $40

Private investment in infrastructure, 2007-2016

Cambodia: Private ICT infrastructure not major problem Barrier: availability of low frequency (i.e., <900 MHz)

All ~ 14,000 villages to be on fiber backbone New USO

Business use

Firms with own web site (%) Firms using email to interact with clients / suppliers (%)

Country Total Small Medium Large Total Small Medium Large

Cambodia (2016)

24 22 31 38 58 54 70 89

Rwanda (2011)

34 24 47 64 77 68 88 97

Senegal (2014)

35 16 59 83 65 50 86 97

Vanuatu (2009)

24 20 29 na 84 77 95 na

Source: World Bank Enterprise Surveys.

UN E-Government Development Index

Country Rank 2010

Rank 2016

EGDI 2016

Rank Change

Rwanda (7th) 148 138 0.3390 +10

Senegal (9th) 163 144 0.3251 +19

Vanuatu (13th) 155 149 0.3078 +6

Cambodia (17th) 140 158 0.2593 -18

https://publicadministration.un.org/egovkb/Data-Center

http://www.doingbusiness.org/data/exploretopics/starting-a-business

40th in

Online

Service

Component

among

LDCs

9

7

4 5

99

18 6 4

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

0

2

4

6

8

10

Cambodia Vanuatu Senegal Rwanda

Starting a Business

Procedures Days

Health

Financial Inclusion

Global Financial Inclusion (2014) & Vanuatu Financial Inclusion Survey (2016)

13

38

12

39 10

4

4

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

45

Cambodia Rwanda Senegal Vanuatu

Mobile money account only (% age 15+)

Account at a financial institution (% age 15+)

6 providers

Startups & software

developers

MoU with operator for free Internet in schools: Phase I (2009-2015): 500 schools Phase II (2016-2020): 4,000

ICT curriculum for Grades 11 & 12

Content portal

Online practice test for secondary school exam

Out of Cambodia: Data and computer services deficits

Online advertising

International bandwidth

$40

$30

$20

$10

$0

$10

2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016Credits

Debits

Trade in computer & information services, US$ million

-US$ 168 million

2016 (0.8% GDP)

These changes are significant for the

broader media ecosystem in

Cambodia, Reid said. “Last year,

Facebook edged ahead of television

as the number-one source of news for

Cambodians according to one survey.

Post Khmer, the Khmer-language

Facebook page for the Phnom Penh

Post, has the fourth-most likes in the

country, and seven out of 10 of the

most popular Facebook pages here

are news websites or newspapers,”

she told me.

Cambodia’s news infrastructure

experienced a radical change,

overnight. And none of the editors I

was able to contact, or anyone that

they knew, had heard from

Facebook about the change before

it happened. They just walked into

work one day and everything was

different.

SWOT

Strengths • Highly competitive telecom market

with low prices • High Internet penetration for LDC

• Robust backbone • Small but vibrant startup and tech

community • Homogenous linguistic market

Weaknesses • Low level of digital literacy

• Lack of ICT vision at highest level of government (95/139 Importance of ICTs to

government vision of the future)

• Limited government investment in ICT for public e-services (120/139 ICT Use &

Government Efficiency)

• Lack of low frequency spectrum

Opportunities • Business connectivity market • E-government / e-services • Computer services exports

• Diversify economy

Threats • Growing ICT-related data and services

trade deficit • Loss of competitiveness