Communications in Cambodia

This is an article about Communications in Cambodia.

As of 1987?, the Cambodian state controls printed and electronic communications media and regulates their content. The most authoritative print medium in 1987 was the ruling KPRP's biweekly journal, Pracheachon (The People), which was inaugurated in October 1985 to express the party's stand on domestic and international affairs. Almost as important, however, was the weekly of the KUFNCD, Kampuchea. The principal publication of the armed forces was the weekly Kangtoap Padevoat (Revolutionary Army). As of late 1987, Cambodia still had no daily newspaper.

Radio and television were under the direction of the Kampuchean Radio and Television Commission, created in 1983. In 1986 there were about 200,000 radio receivers in the country. The Voice of the Kampuchean People (VOKP) radio programs were broadcast in Khmer, Vietnamese, French, English, Lao, and Thai. With Vietnamese assistance, television broadcasting was instituted on a trial basis in December 1983 and then regularly at the end of 1984. As of March 1986, Television Kampuchea (TVK) operated two hours an evening, four days a week in the Phnom Penh area only. There were an estimated 52,000 television sets as of early 1986. In December 1986, Vietnam agreed to train Cambodian television technicians. The following month, the Soviet Union agreed to cooperate with Phnom Penh in the development of electronic media. Cambodian viewers began to receive Soviet television programs after March 1987, through a satellite ground station that the Soviet Union had built in Phnom Penh.

Beginning in 1979, the Heng Samrin regime encouraged people to read official journals and to listen to the radio every day. Widespread illiteracy and a scarcity of both print media and radio receivers, however, meant that few Cambodians could follow the government's suggestion. But even when these media were available, "cadres and combatants" in the armed forces, for example, were more interested in listening to music programs than in reading about "the situation and developments in the country and the world or articles on good models of good people."

Telecommunications

Postal, telegraph, and telegram services under the Ministry of Communications, Transport, and Posts were restored throughout most of the country in the early 1980s. Radio communications were frequent; the Voice of the Kampuchean People broadcasted ten hours daily from Phnom Penh in the late 1980s. An estimated 171,000 radio sets existed in the country in 1984 (the last year for which data were available). Cambodia's only television station began broadcasting, with Vietnamese assistance, in December 1984. Color transmissions began in July 1986.

In January 1987, the Soviet-aided Intersputnik space communications station began operation in Phnom Penh and established two-way telecommunication links between the Cambodian capital and the cities of Moscow, Hanoi, Vientiane, and Paris. The completion of the earth satellite station (built on the grounds of Phnom Penh's old Roman Catholic cathedral), restored the telephone and telex links among Phnom Penh, Hanoi, and other socialist countries for the first time since 1975. Although telecommunications services were limited to the government, these advances in communications helped break down the country's isolation, both internally and internationally.

Telephones - main lines in use: 21,800 (mid-1998)

Telephones - mobile cellular: 34,880 (1998)

Telephone system: adequate landline and/or cellular service in Phnom Penh and other provincial cities; rural areas have little telephone service
domestic: NA
international: adequate but expensive landline and cellular service available to all countries from Phnom Penh and major provincial cities; satellite earth station - 1 Intersputnik (Indian Ocean region)

Radio broadcast stations: AM 7, FM 3, shortwave 3 (1999)

Radios: 1.34 million (1997)

Television broadcast stations: 5 (1999)

Televisions: 94,000 (1997)

Internet Service Providers (ISPs): 2 (1999)

Country code (Top-level domain): KH

See also : Cambodiabg:Комуникации в Камбоджа