State of Mobile Networks: Cambodia (August 2017)

In our first look at Cambodia, OpenSignal found a country aggressively building out its 4G networks. But while LTE signals are readily accessible, both 3G and 4G speeds are still slow. Analyzing more than 86 million measurements collected from 8,414 devices in the 2nd quarter, OpenSignal examined the 3G and 4G experience of Cambodian consumers on the country's three major providers: CamGSM's Cellcard, Viettel's Metfone and Smart Axiata. First, let's take a look at how these three stacked up in 4G availability.

Cambodia has been making up for lost time in the telecommunications sector, focusing on mobile connectivity rather than wireline infrastructure as the primary means of internet access. We definitely see that effort reflected in our 4G availability results. Two operators, Cellcard and Smart had LTE availability scores higher than 70% in our results. OpenSignal's availability metric measures the proportion of time users can access a particular network. In the case of Cellcard and Smart, our testers were able to latch onto their LTE signals more than seven times out of 10. The two operators were statistically tied for the lead in our 4G availability metric, though the same can't be said for Metfone. Our users were only able to find Metfone's LTE service 55.9% of the time.

According to OpenSignal's recent State of LTE report, Cambodia overall has an availability score of 63.3%, putting it on par with fellow Southeast Asian countries Indonesia and Malaysia and well ahead of the Philippines. Neighboring Thailand, however, was the country to beat in the region with an overall 4G availability of 75.9% in that first quarter reporting period.

In 4G speed, OpenSignal recorded a clear winner. Cellcard's measured average LTE download speed of 19.7 Mbps was nearly twice as fast as the 2nd place result tested on Smart Axiata. Metfone's 4G download score of 4.6 Mbps was very slow — speeds we typically see on 3G connections. While we're seeing LTE services become more readily accessible in Cambodia, those services are still generally limited in capacity. In our June LTE report, we measured the average worldwide LTE connection at 16.2 Mbps, a benchmark both Metfone and Smart Axiata fell well short of in our speed tests.

We saw another draw for our 3G speed award. Cellcard and Metfone averaged about 2 Mbps in our 3G download tests, producing a statistical tie for first, but none of the major operators offered up particularly fast UMTS speeds. Our average speed test for all three fell well below the global average of 4.4 Mbps. For overall speed, Cellcard again emerged as a the clear winner in our tests with an average speed of 8.1 Mbps across all of its data networks. Cellcard not only had the fastest LTE speeds but also one of the highest LTE availabilities, which allowed its customers to tap faster 4G connections more often.

Building enough capacity to support fast mobile connection speeds is an issue throughout Southeast Asia. According to our February Global State of Mobile Networks report, the typical connection speed in Cambodia across all networks was 5.7 Mbps, which put it near the bottom of the 87 countries we ranked, but Cambodia was joined on the lower rungs of our chart by Thailand, Myanmar, Indonesia and the Philippines. Still, considering LTE only first launched in Cambodia in 2014, the country has made significant progress in extending 4G services to its population. As Cambodian operators add more capacity to their networks, 4G speeds will increase to match LTE's growing reach.