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2009-06-09 - Cambodia and Laos Telecommunications Report Q2 2009 - a new market research report on companiesandmarkets.com
www.companiesandmarkets.com/Summary-Market-Report/cambodia-and-l ..
Several structural changes have been made to the latest update on the telecommunications market in Cambodia and Laos. The changes include a reorganisation of the various sections of the report and the adoption of a new format forpresenting the operator profiles. The Mobile Data section of the report includes new coverage of the development of mobile value added services in both Cambodia and Laos, as well as an overview of recent contract wins. In this quarter, we have focused more attention on developing the mobile sections of our report, including the mobile operator profiles. In our next quarterly update, we plan to introduce considerable revisions to the fixed line and broadband sections of our report.
With the publication of new subscriber data by several Cambodian and Laotian mobile operators, we have been able to provide a clearer assessment of the state of the two countries’ mobile sectors at the end of 2008. By the end of 2008, we estimate that Cambodia had 3.839mn mobile subscribers, served by six operators. Our new estimate for the country gives it a penetration rate of 26.2% and reflects an annual growth rate of 48.6%. Meanwhile, Laos had around 1.545mn mobile customers at the end of 2008. This is equivalent to 25.2% of the population and reflects growth of around 39% for the year. The growth in Laos’ mobile sector was not as strong as we had previously expected; this resulted in a much lower penetration rate at the end of the year. Our new estimates for the number of mobile customers in Cambodia and Laos at the end of 2008 have also led us to make significant revisions to our five-year growth forecasts for these two countries. We have also introduced a 3G subscriber forecast for Cambodia for the first time.
The number of mobile operators in Cambodia witnessed a significant rise in the first few months of 2009 with the launch of commercial services by Vietnam’s Viettel in February 2009, and the commencement of GSM operations by Smart Mobile in March. The launch of Viettel and Smart Mobile bring the total number of Cambodian mobile operators to eight. A ninth mobile operator is expected to launch services sometime in 2009; in December 2008, Russia’s VimpelCom revealed that it had signed a contract with China’s Huawei Technologies to build a national GSM network for its recently acquired Cambodian operator Sotelco. VimpelCom has pledged around US$200mn to be spent in its Cambodian network in the first three to four years following its commercial launch.
BMI’s latest set of business environment ratings for the Asia Pacific region include Cambodia and Laos for the first time. Cambodia sits in twelfth place behind Indonesia but ahead of Laos, which is in thirteenth place. The high level of government involvement in both telecoms markets means that they have regulatory independence score which is below average for the region. Both countries also score below average in the country risk category. Although Cambodia beats Laos in the telecoms market category, Laos does much better than Cambodia in the country structure category.
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