Phnom Penh: It’s the news big business, online teachers and gamers have been waiting for. A better mobile service and a faster internet connection in Cambodia. The Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications has announced the start of a major project to improve mobile towers nationwide. They should all be completed in 2027.

The Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications says it is the increase in high-rise buildings and mobile service providers focusing only on urban or densely-populated areas that are the main reasons the network service in the country is so poor. Minister Chea Vandeth says that as a result, some areas of the country, even in the capital, have no internet access at all, but that’s all set to change.

Minister Vandeth says a working group has been formed to monitor all mobile towers, measuring the strength of their signals and fine-tuning them, in order to ensure higher quality signals to all the country’s communes by 2027. Food delivery driver, Nol Kinin, was happy to hear about the Ministry's plan, saying “I work as a delivery man so I need to have faster internet service. If the internet connection is poor, I can’t easily contact my customers. It’s the same problem for them. If the government will develop our mobile towers, I will be very happy for that and I think it’s a good idea because people in the countryside will also get a chance to use the internet." Eon Chet, who works online, says this will be a great help for his job, “"I am happy if this will happen because I work online. So, the internet is very necessary for me. Sometimes, due to a slow connection, I respond to my customers very late."

The Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications says Cambodia has 17.48-million mobile internet subscribers, using the services of five mobile network companies.