The objective of the project is to bring telephone service to low income families in rural and remote areas in Cambodia. The project consists of two primary components:

Sub-project ‘A’ will support the provision of mobile phone service in areas where residents currently do not have access to telephony but where there is sufficient population density to generate a financially viable mobile segment.

Sub-project ‘B’ will support the provision of public phones using the Village Phone business model in areas where residents currently do not have access to telephony and where population density is too low to support a financially viable mobile segment.

A competitive bidding process will select private firms to construct and operate new telecommunications services.

As a result of increased competition in the Cambodian mobile phone market, commercial operators have already provided network coverage that extends access to voice services to the target areas that would have benefited from this project, therefore the subsidy funding project has been dropped. The Technical Assistance activity has been completed.

All together this project will bring some form of telephony access to approximately 260,000 people.

GPOBA has previously committed Technical Assistance funding to help design an output-based scheme to increase telecommunications access in Cambodia. GPOBA has approved a grant to fund subsides.

TBD

Peter Silarszky