Khmer News- Cambodian economy
CIO Club forum on June 15, 2006 at Norton University was initiated by Cambodian Computer Society (CCS) and cooperated and supported by the Association of Cambodia Technology, Telecommunication and Information Technology. The forum is under the theme of “Infrastructure and Telecommunication Charges: Challenge, Opportunity, and Prosperity of Telecommunication in Cambodia.â€
This Forum organized is aimed at raising problems and recommendation on policy making and the development of Cambodia Telecommunication for concerned institution.
After making discussion, there are some challenges found as following:
- The law and strategic policy have not yet been passed
- Telecommunication infrastructure is still limited
- The tax on telecommunication is too high
- The rent of infrastructure is very high
- Rent of Internet connection and services from overseas is too high
- Cambodia does not have Internet Data Center/ Data Mirror to store main content
- Khmer content are not yet much available, the charge of DNS is high and its services are limited.
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No matter how many meeting, workshop, and conference you’ve made, the price of internet is still the same, because there’s a lack of wills to tackle the problems.
1. The law passed or not is not the problem, because you’ve seen so many law have passed, but it never enforce.
2. Telecommunication is limited? With the existing technology internet can cost much less than today….We do not have enough optic connectivities.. but with situation like Cambodia many country in africa, and afghanista, iraq uses satelite as their gateway to international connectivities. Imagine if each ISPs have their own satellite link how the total through put improve?? But technecally Camnet is the monopoly in upstream market.
3. TAx? too high?? yeah but i donno what kind of tax involve in telecome services (special tax i think)
4. Infrastructure?? be specific?? optic connectivities?? haha yeah it’s high..
5. International connectivities is expensive?? I don’t a gree… for satellite you can get a 1mbps down and 512kbps up around 200 usd these days… that’s enough for application that require qualities of services to be better it can go up alittle bit…
6. We do not require data center now… we need only affordable connectivities … Once more people connect to internet the data service will improve accordingly…
7. Khmer content?? do not bother with it… It is crazy that our government have eatablished authorities, spend alot of korean money… cannot even established on usable font the the whole cambodian to use… Nida has a version of Khmer unicode developed by khmer os…. the latest version of windows uses another version of unicode…Which one to use??? how the khmer font to be easily put up in a website?? for me I don’t bother write khmer contents because it is not search engine friendly… and it is not yet standardized…
Those people who works to improve telecommunications is playing with toys now that is why
In conclusion :
- Cambodia government don’t worry about wired lines infrastructure development especially optic cable lines which can support high speed connection
- Cambodia government doesn’t know that internet communications are one of the way to booster development (because of the lowest payment in comparison with the other kinds of communications)
- Life level in Cambodia is very low that each family can not afford to to pay for more than 500 dollars for the monthly subscription of an 1024 kbits/s upload internet line. In contrary, life levels in USA or Europe are very high but Europe or USA family pay the internet line monthly subscription of 30 dollars for 28 – 30 Mbits/S
- Hope Cambodia government will focus in this case:
* Firstly is the wired lines network in Cambodia
* Secondly is the high speed gateway (satellite)
* Thirdly is the coastal gateway or submarine gateway (highest gateway) at Kampong Som which links with International submarine telecommunications network (Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Hongkong, Taiwan,…)
Internet is an unstopable tools of democracy, we see blogs, forum, that people freely express them self… No government can stop internet… So the willingness of the government to bring internet to all cambodian people is questionable. If there’s a will I am sure it is possible.
If Gov’t have willingness, the internet fee will cut down. By the way, NiDA’s activity is like going very slowly.
Yesterday, I, my colleague and YCC’s staff went to one of districts in Kandal province, located in rural areas. We went there in order to disseminate ICT to youths. And then I asked them about ICT. Almost of them do not know what ICT is. they said that they know how to use computer a little bit like Microsoft word, Excel . On the the hand, the lack of electricity.
All of them do not know what is Email, internet…etc.
How does the government boost the awareness of ICT to reach remote rural areas??
Vutha, Make one button says I DEMAND AFFORDABLE INTERNET CONNECTION IN CAMBODIA and share every one to post on their websites… I will be glad to post
Hey, Borin. I don’t know idea yet. If you have some idea, please let me know or help me. right?