FAQ (and not so FAQ)

Communications

Most recent update: December 5, 2006

1.) How are the internet connections?
2.) Is there cable TV in Cambodia?
3.) How are the telephones?
4.) What about purchasing a mobile phone or a SIM card for an existing mobile?
5.) What's there to read in English?
6.) Are there any shops offering used books?
7.) What about sending and receiving mail?

Q: How are the internet connections?

A: Not great, but usable. In Phnom Penh and Siem Reap it seems like you can find an internet cafe on almost every block. Rates in Phnom Penh are as low as 1000 riels (25 cents) an hour, in Siem Reap except to pay about $0.75 to $1.25 an hour. Connections are much scarcer elsewhere in the country. Most of the internet cafes use a wireless satellite system which reliability seems dependent on how many clouds are in the sky, the relative positions of the sun, earth, moon, and the Starship Enterprise.

Most internet shops are not run by internet professionals and suffer from the same problems of having inferior poorly-maintained computers riddled with bugs and a staff with minimal understanding of how the systems work. In Phnom Penh you would do well not to shop around for the cheapest price as many of the 1000 riel and 2000 riel an hour shops have absolute crap for equipment. One decent shop I can recommend is Sunny Internet newly located on Sisowath Quay just north of Street 178 (across the street from the FCC). I think their rates are about a dollar an hour but well worth the extra charge.

In Siem Reap, there is the E-Cafe ($1.25/hour), Sivatha St across from the Dead Fish Tower, which to my knowledge is the only DSL shop in Siem Reap. Two shops next to the Red Piano are pretty good, too and may be using DSL now, though I'm not positive of this.

Most places allow for downloads, uploads, digital camera downloads, CD burning, etc. Now despite my endorsement of the E-Cafe they in fact do not provide for these services, the logic being that by not doing so they can keep their computers clean and fast.

Free Wi-Fi spots are popping up all over the place and becoming more common in hotels and is even appearing in a few guesthouses. In Siem Reap you can find it at the Blue Pumpkin, the FCC, and Molly Malone's, and if you want it in a guesthouse you can also look up Two Dragons or the Villa Siem Reap. But don't expect a particularly fast connection.

If you're looking for a home connection here are your options:

Online: The best and also the most expensive. For full details see their website at: http://www.online.com.kh. For dial-up they offer pre-paid cards providing six hours for $10, twelve hours for $20, thirty hours for $50, and sixty-five hours for $100. ADSL starts at $99 a month for a 128 kbps connection that gives you 800 mb free download plus $0.08 to 0.10 for every mb thereafter per month, the more you use the lower the per mb charge. Oh, and there's a $45 per month line charge on top of that. Yeah, ouch. Click the link for even more horrific prices. Trust me, you'll want to be sitting down when you see what a 1 mbps connection costs. Though bandwidth allowances have been increased lately, you won't be downloading too many lossless music files at these prices. They do offer an unlimited bandwidth connection at $219 per month for a 64kbs speed but you'll do will to get 10kbs at any one time.

Telesurf: Offers the wireless satellite system a lot of internet cafes use. Variable quality, poor customer service record. Prices start at $22 (10% VAT included) per month for a 64kbs connection for service that works when the sun is shining and the celestial bodies are in harmony with each other. $77 gets you 128kbs. Extra charges for bandwidth. Website is here: http://www.telesurf.com.kh/.

Camintel: A slightly cheaper DSL alternative to Online but not a company with much of a service record. http://www.camintel.com/. $220 (10% VAT included) gets you unlimited bandwidth at a 128kbs downladed that hits 16kbs on a good day.

CityLink: http://www.citylink.com.kh/. Started out with cheaper prices than the others but is now pretty much the same as everyone else, charging $219 per month for the same sloppy 64kbs unlimited download.

Angkornet: http://www.angkornet.com.kh/ The newest entrant on the scene. When I tried accessing their webpage it was unavailable. Draw your own conclusions.

Q: Is there cable TV in Cambodia?

A: Absolutely. And it's cheap because the cable TV companies steal it, grabbing broadcasts from other cable systems (much of it coming from UBC in Thailand), and wrapping it up into an inexpensive package. For around $10 a month, packages with as much as 80 channels are available in both Phnom Penh and Siem Reap as well as some other provincial capitals. As it is a stolen signal and this is Cambodia, the system does cut out on an alarmingly regular basis. Usually it's only for a couple of minutes, but those couple of minutes will likely occur in the closing minutes of the World Cup finals. Some of the channels offered are HBO, Cinemax (both are the sanitized Asian versions), Star Movies, CNN, BBC News, MSNBC, Star Sports, ESPN (Asia), Star Sports, Super Sports, Discovery, National Geographic, Animal Planet, History Channel, Hallmark, MTV (Asia), Channel V, most of the Thai channels, all the Cambodian channels, NHK (Japan), Arirang (Korea), French channel 5, the German satellite network, a number of Chinese and Taiwanese stations, and a handful of channels from Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, India, Vietnam, and probably one or two other countries I've overlooked.

In Siem Reap, Star Cable offers a much better package than Sunday Cable. Beware installation pricing games. The installation and billing is subbed to independent contractors who operate under no set of rules and tend to price installation and monthly charges for whatever they think you'll pay.

Q: How are the telephones?

A: The landline system is very limited and covers only Phnom Penh and the provincial capitals, however, there is an extensive mobile system served by several networks.

All telephone numbers are six digits with a three-digit prefix. Each province has its own prefix (Phnom Penh is 023, Siem Reap is 063, Sihanoukville is 034) and each of the mobile networks uses a different prefix. If calling between provinces or a different mobile network, you have to dial the prefix. If calling from outside Cambodia, the country code is 855 and the initial '0' of the prefix is omitted.

The mobile networks are Shinawatra (011), Mobitel (012, 092), and Samart (015 and 016). There was CamTel (018), but they're out of business now. Mobitel has recently introduced seven-digit numbers in the form of 012-1xx-xx-xx. So don't be confused to see a number in such a configuration.

The system is such that it's always cheaper to call within your own network and an overwhelming majority of people here use Mobitel (aka MobiHell), probably 90-95%. While Mobitel is not the cheapest network, because of the pricing system and that almost everybody uses Mobitel, it is by default then, the cheapest. Not to be a Mobitel advertisement, but if you're going to get a mobile here, that's the company you'll want to be with.

Public phone booths consist of someone with a handful of mobile phones, at least one for each network. You tell them what network (or just tell them the number) you're calling and you'll be handed a phone. Rates run around 300 riels a minute.

There are some "pay phones" in Siem Reap and Phnom Penh, but as there are no coins in this country, you're going to have to find somewhere a prepaid card to use them. They haven't done a very good job promoting these new "pay phones" because nobody I know knows anything about them other than, "Hey, look, there's a phone booth." I have yet to see anybody actually use one of these things.

There are also international public phones around Phnom Penh. Be forewarned, Cambodia is an expensive country to make an international phone call from, but has become cheaper in the past year. For example, a call to Thailand is about a dollar a minute.

The telecommunications ministry at one point banned internet phones (if you could stand hearing everything you said twice) but the service has returned at prices usually around 1000 riels ($0.25) per minute. Check at local internet shops.

Q: What about purchasing a mobile phone or a SIM card for an existing mobile?

A: If you want to buy a mobile phone or get a SIM card for an existing phone, that is now a potentially complicated procedure. It used to be you'd walk into any one of the thousands of phone shops in Cambodia, hand over a photo copy of your passport and they'd register a phone number for you. Now as a foreigner, you must verify that you have a legitimate business purpose here - this will require an organization ID card, copy of a business license, tax return, etc. In the absence of these documents, no one will likely give you a SIM card in your name for any amount of money. However, while they won't register the SIM card in your name, some phone shops will have someone register a number for you in their name for a fee of around $10 or you can just find a Khmer you know and put it in their name probably for nothing. But if you're coming here to set up a business you can get the SIM card in your own name without any extra 'fees'. No one can understand in the least why they made it so difficult for foreigners to get numbers.

Phones start at about $100 and go up from there. Forget about any kind of a warranty. My first phone, a Siemens, was accompanied by an instruction manual written in Arabic so you ought to be able to figure out by what means the phone arrived in Cambodia. My present phone, a Nokia, came with Vietnamese as its primary language. SIM cards start at around $10 and go up in price depending on the perceived desirability of the number.

Service is provided on a pre-paid basis. Phone shops sell Mobitel cards in denominations of $5, $10, $20, and $50. You simply scratch off a ten-digit code, dial a special number, punch in the code and the value is credited to your account. The cards have a limitd time period for usage if you do not add more money later. A $5 card is good for 30 days, a $10 card for 40 days, a $20 card for 55 days, and a $50 card is good for 90 days.

Once on the Mobitel system you can dial 812, push a few numbers, and find out how much time is left on your card among other options. 822 is a shortcut to find out how much money you have left.

Mobitel calls are charged by the minute and time of day. For calls within the Mobitel network from 7 am to 8 pm, usage with a $5 card is 10 cents a minute, a $10 card is 9 cents a minute, a $20 card is 8 cents a minute, and a $50 card eats up at 7 cents a minute. From 8 pm to midnight, a $5 card is 9 cents a minute, $10 and $20 cards are 8 cents a minute, and $50 cards come in at 6 cents a minute. From midnight to 7 am all calls are 4 cents a minute. Calls to numbers outside the network cost from 8 to 13 cents a minute depending on time of day and what value card you're using.

Text messaging within the network is 3 cents a minute, 5 cents outside the network, and 10 cents for international. However, $5 cards provide for 20 free messages, $10 cards 50 free messages, $20 cards 80 free messages, and $50 cards offer 100 free messages.

Contracts resulting in monthly bills are available but the deposit is quite high and I really can't see why this would be worthwhile when the prepaid calling card system is so simple.

Q: What's there to read in English?

A: Monument Books on Norodom Blvd, Phnom Penh is the main English-language book retailer. Supply of books is pretty good. They also opened a branch recently in Siem Reap. As far as publications go, the two main newspapers are the Cambodia Daily and the Phnom Penh Post. The former publishes every day except Sunday. They provide international news off the wires (usually what was published in the previous day's Bangkok Post) and write their own local news with questionable accuracy. It is not a particularly well-respected publication. The Phnom Penh Post publishes every two weeks and is exclusively Cambodia news. The quality of the material they publish ebbs and flows as the paper can't seem to keep staff for very long, so they tend only to be as good as their reporters. In their defense, it may be that perhaps events in Cambodia aren't as exciting as they used to be either... the price of progress, I suppose. Still, I like the newspaper, read every issue and consider the Phnom Penh Post to be a considerably better alternative to the Cambodia Daily.

On a lighter note, there is the monthly free magazine, The Bayon Pearnik, love it or hate it, it is the most widely read English language publication in the country. Sometimes irreverent, sometimes useful, it's a mixture of travel stories, editorials, jokes - usually a bit racy, and a lot of adverts - which might help you find a place to grab a bite or a drink.

A new magazine on the newsstands is called the Cambodian Scene, or something like that. It's published every two months, costs a buck, and is a travel, culture, lifestyle magazine.

The Bangkok Post, The Nation (Bangkok), and The International Herald Tribune, also make there way into Cambodia on a daily basis.

There are a couple of French-language publications as well.

If you're going to be here for awhile and worried about your reading supply, pop into Kinokuniya Books in Bangkok at either the third floor of the Emporium Shopping Mall at Sukhumvit 24 (Phrom Phong BTS Station)or at Siam Paragon and stock up before you arrive. They are probably the best bookstore between Hong Kong and Kuala Lumpur.

Q: Are there any shops offering used books?

A: Yes there are. In Phnom Penh a large selection of books can be found at the London Book Centre on Street 240, but large doesn't necessarily guarantee good. Also check out Fantastic Planet on Street 278. In Siem Reap used bookstores have come and gone, but there are a couple of places in the Old Market area.

Q: What about sending and receiving mail?

A: Most letters and packages do seem to find their recipient here, though as happened in 2001, a package for me sat at the Siem Reap post office for three months before anybody bothered informing me about it. Likewise, outward bound letters and packages also seem to reach their destination eventually, though in defense fo the Cambodia postal service last year I sent a CD to Philadelphia, USA and it arrived in something ridiculous like six days. Still, you might want to consider doing your mailing from Bangkok. Post Restante service is available.

Bear in mind that if you're sending a letter or package to a local they will be charged from between 500 and 2000 riels to have it delivered to them.

DHL and Fed Ex are in Phnom Penh and DHL is also in Siem Reap. Courier deliveries to other locations in the country are usually turned over to the local Khmer Express Mail service. My one experience in using this service was positive.

On a final note, Cambodia has some really beautiful stamps. Send yourself a postcard or something.

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All text and photographs © 1998 - 2006 Gordon Sharpless. Commercial or editorial usage without written permission of the copyright holder is prohibited.