OUDAM.COM

Internet access in Cambodia

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If you have noticed that I haven’t posting videos on Oudam.com as often any more, it’s because I have been adding content to my newest Khmer video sharing site, Khmerflix.com. Whereas Oudam.com is a general blog for a wide range of materials, including articles, news, audio playlists and Youtube videos, Khmerflix.com is dedicated mostly to Khmer-related audio-visual entertainment media. While still in launching stage, Khmerflix now has almost 1,500 videos which have been viewed over 150,000 times. I find that I could post 20-30 videos on Khmerflix easily in one sitting, whereas I have time to post only a few a day on Oudam.com. Khmerflix.com also has audio playlists where you can just click on the play button and have your computer playing Khmer songs (categorized by genre and artist) non-stop. In future, I will modify the script to allow people to play flash games right on the site.

Here in Cambodia the internet is slow, unreliable and very expensive compared to that in the U.S. Unlimited broadband access runs about $300 to $400 a month. That’s a lot to pay for internet access in a country where many people live on less than a dollar a day. And even at those rates, the speed and reliability don’t even compare to the $40-a-month DSL connection that you get in the States. Needless to say, very few people subscribe to the $300/month service for private use. These services are used mainly by internet cafes that buys one line and divide the bandwidth among a couple dozen computers and charge their customers by the hour for usage– usually around 2,000 riels ($0.50 US) per hour. Other customers includes schools, hotels, and non-governmental organizations (NGO’s).

Customers can go to the internet cafes to make international calls very inexpensively, usually for around 2 to 3 cents a minute to the U.S. If you have your own internet access, you can easily set up Yahoo Messenger on your computer which allows you to call the U.S. for just 1 cent a minute. I have a U.S. phone number on my Yahoo Messenger account which allow my friends and relatives in the U.S. to call me toll-free. The only catches are the 12-hour difference and that my laptop has to be on and connected to the internet to receive their calls.

My apartment offers unlimited access for $65 a month. But it’s only a 128K line that is shared by 10 other tenants, so access can be very slow at times, especially during peak hours. That’s why I like to use the web at odd hours while most people are asleep. I tried a dial-up service where I hook my cell phone (as a modem) to my computer to access the web. That was a joke, as it took me a full three minutes just to load the homepage of this site.

I hear that the internet is much cheaper and faster just next door in Vietnam. So, why is it so expensive and unreliable here? Of course, corruption comes to mind. While I’m sure corruption has something to do with the high cost and low reliability, the main reason is that relatively few people use the internet in Cambodia. The internet remains an alien concept to many of the older generations, who go to internet cafes mainly to make international calls to their relatives abroad. This relatively new medium is more popular with kids who like to go to internet cafes to play interactive games online, often while skipping school. Some people use the web for research, but this is largely limited by language barriers. Because of relatively low internet usage, providers must pass high cost of their initial investments to the few subscribers that they get.

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