The number you are dialing …

Telecom news of the day.

Based on data published by Cambodia’s leading mobile operators, BMI calculates that the Cambodian mobile customer base grew by 15.5% in the first three months of 2009. By the end of March, Cambodia had almost 4.6mn mobile users, equivalent to a penetration rate of around 30%.

The telecom sector has attracted investments of $234 million in the first nine months of 2009, an increase of $199 million over the same period last year. According to this story in The Guardian, cellphone penetration rates hover about 60 percent globally and 48 percent in the developing world.

BarCamp Phnom Penh 2009

BarCamp Phnom Penh is this weekend at Pannasastra University. Complete details at http://barcampphnompenh.org/.

RIP/long live one laptop per child

At UN Dispatch, Alanna Shaikh puts a fork in the dream of one laptop per child.

The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project started out with big dreams. Founded by Nicholas Negroponte of MIT’s media lab, it promised a hundred dollar laptop that would be sold directly to Ministries of Education in huge lots. The laptop, they promised, was the new pencil. It was going to revolutionize education in the developing world.

It didn’t.

… Once the laptop finally started arriving in the developing world, its impact was minimal. We think. No one is doing much research on their impact on education; discussions are largely theoretical. This we do know: OLPC didn’t provide tech support for the machines, or training in how to incorporate them into education. Teachers didn’t understand how to use the laptops in their lessons; some resented them. Kids like the laptops, but they don’t actually seem to help them learn.

It’s time to call a spade a spade. OLPC was a failure. Businessweek called it two years ago. Now, Timothy Ogden, editor-in-chief of Philanthropy Action has made a compelling argument to give up on OLPC. He points out that supporting de-worming programs has more impact on child learning than the OLPC laptops.  The laptops were designed without end-user input, they cost too much both to produce and to run, and they’re now being outcompeted by commercial laptops.

Daniela Papi, who, unlike Shaikh, has actually spent time in villages where OLPC computers are in use, says Shaikh is “saying bananas don’t taste good and are of no use to humans when eating those she bought in her local 7-11, having never tried one off the vine in Honduras.”

We use the OLPC laptops in Cambodia and when I look at them in use, I see my Apple2e. It’s very basic now in some ways, but that’s the point. It’s opensource. The people in the places that are using these can, will and are developing better and better programs for it.

I have been to the schools the Negropontes sponsor in Cambodia, which was our impetus to apply for laptops through the give-one-get-one program. Spend a day in one of their schools, and I guarantee you will change your mind …

… I have seen in our students and the other OLPC programs we work with in Cambodia, that these tools are inspiring children to lead themselves into areas of education that they are not given access to in their normal government classes.

… Here in Cambodia, there are groups of young Cambodians who meet regularly to translate OLPC programs into Khmer. The new versions we just got have Khmer script and we are now using Scratch in Khmer as well. Walk into a classroom where we work and see older students teaching younger students how to read Khmer via the animated Khmer testing program they designed themselves, and you will change your mind a bit. Talk to our computer teachers, young Cambodians who taught themselves how to use the XOs, and yes, they will tell you there is a lot they don’t understand, but they are effecting change. You can’t see that from your office, but I can see it here.

There are always critics, and there has always been criticism of the OLPC program.  But because Shaikh is writing under the UN’s name, her spread is misinformation is particularly harmful. Nearly all of her criticisms have been debunked. Furthermore, at just 4 years old, the OLPC project is still in its beginning stages, and much development is yet to be done. It’s a computer, fer chrissake.

PHOTO CREDIT: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cariaso/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Three-wheeled software

RealWat Inc., a Montreal firm with offices in Phnom Penh, this week  announced the release of some new-fangled computer gizmo named after the tuk-tuk. It’s called “Ti-Took.”

Ti-Took is a safe web browsing software solution that integrates minimalist design with innovative technology to deliver a fast, safe, easy and personalized web experience.

Named after the tuk-tuk vehicles that carry riders anywhere all day long in east Asian cities and towns, Ti-Took is a simple, trustworthy way of navigating the complex and often dangerous world of the internet.

Fear merchants. File here.

The Post goes retro

Like the web site itself at the moment, though, the links are pretty useless.

Spambodia

The latest pitch from spammers.

Sir, It is my honor and with a heart deep of humiliation and seeking good consolation that I seek to write to you. My name is Miss.Anusa Hirunpatravong From Thailand now exile in Cambodia, My Late Father was personal Aid to Mr.Thaksin Shinawatra on home affairs, the former Prime Minister of Thailand . Mr. Thaksin Shinwatra during his tenure as the Prime Minister of Thailand before he was ousted by the military junta through a military coupe de tat in 2006. …

Along with the spam-happy local recruitment firm and that annoying bus company — you know who you are — may you all drive off a cliff.

Government denies Internet censorship

This Ka-set story is a bit dated, but still very worth reading. Meanwhile, Reahut.net and Sacrava Toons continue to be blocked by at least one Cambodian ISP.

AngkorNet refutes censorship claims

In The Cambodia Daily this morning, AngkorNet spokespeople deny claims that the company is blocking access to the Global Witness web site.

AngkorNet CEO Sok Channda denied the report and said the company had not confirmed it to the media.

She said any blockages was likely due to the fact that a proxy server maintained by Angkor Net — through which Internet customers access information such as Web pges and e-mail — had been “blacklisted” as a source of bulk, unsolicited e-mail, or “spam,” causing the server housing the Global Witness website to deny access to AngkorNet subscribers.

The Phnom Penh Post reported yesterday that AngkorNet had deliberately blocked access to the Global Witness site.

In the name of tradition and culture

The Ministry of Information has designs on censoring the Internet.

[T]he Ministry of Information has the intention to put ‘publishing services through electronic systems’ under the control of a law which is being drafted. The Ministry of Information said that electronic news (such as newspapers) will not be affected by this new law, because the major intention of this law is to control the publishing of audio-visual data, of games, and of entertainment programs and advertisements through the Internet, to ensure moral respect.

[...]

“Mr. Nov Sovathero referred to another example that pictures were published by individual Internet users showing Apsaras with naked breasts with sexual postures.

“For him, such pictures can evoke sexual feelings of viewers.

“Thus, he believed that this law can control the publishing of such pictures. He mentioned another example, ‘If a website publishes the beautiful face of a Khmer actress by cutting her face out of another picture and put it onto the naked body of another woman, it is not clear at present which ministry will be responsible for it? The Ministry of Information, or the Ministry of Interior? According to this new draft law, the Ministry of Information is the first to be responsible for it, because it will control all publishing of audio-visual material.’”

Is the government really going to start blocking web sites it considers detrimental to Cambodian culture? That’s sure what it sounds like. Stay tuned.

Internet Party 2008, the aftermath

The city’s Internet geeks got together over the weekend to discuss the state of the country’s technological affairs. Jinja live-blogged the event. Lux Mean got the T-shirt (and a lot of photos).

Cambodia: one laptop per child

Jinja has photos. Apparently there are “tens of thousands” coming. They’re cute. And at $400, not that expensive considering what a real laptop goes for. But who wants to be the kid with a “charity” computer?

Cambodia’s dot com revolution

The dot-com bubble may finally float Cambodia’s way.

Microsoft comes to Cambodia

Vutha says Bill Gates & Co. is setting up shop in Cambodia.

 Yesterday, the Global Software giant Microsoft Corp launched the operation of its new Brand in Cambodia in order to fight against the intellectual property rights, and to sell its products and service in Cambodian market. Microsoft Development Program (MDP) will be responsible for coordinating local marketing program, finding new partners, and the supporting the development of Microsoft’s overall business base in Cambodia. In addition, MDP will distribute its information about how to teach the benefit of using non-pirated software and instruct users and local distributors how to use its systems.

So what’s the price of “genuine” XP software in Cambodia. In comments Ijajaja suggests a whole $3.

BarCamp Phnom Penh

For you computer nerds, and apparently there are a few, comes a genuine Silicon Valley import.

BarCampPhnomPenh is Cambodia’s first BarCamp to provide people with interest in technologies and Internet to come together for a two-day gathering to learn and share skills and knowledge.

The pace of changes in technology is amazing. Too many people may find not only that this is the Age of Information, but also have to live with the so called ‘information overloaded’. And too many people may tell you that they have been left behind. This event hopes to give an open space for everyone to learn, to catch up, and get the most from the communication technology.

As it hopes to introduce a culture of learning and sharing in an open space the BarCampPhnomPenh will be a place where its participants can learn useful technology and tools available, so that they can make use of them to empower and enhance their operating firms and organizations.

Wikipedia helps explain the name.

The name “BarCamp” is a playful allusion to the event’s origins, with reference to the hacker slang term, foobar: BarCamp arose as a spin-off of Foo Camp, an annual invitation-only participant driven conference hosted by open source publishing luminary Tim O’Reilly.

The first BarCamp was held in Palo Alto, California, from August 19-21, 2005, in the offices of Socialtext. It was organized in less than one week, from concept to event, with 200 attendees. Since then, BarCamps have been held in over 31 cities around the world, in North America, South America, Africa, Europe, Australasia and Asia.

“Foobar” itself is pinched from the U.S. military acronym FUBAR, as in Fouled Up Beyond All Recognition.

Overseas calling

Jeff has the latest on the latest VOIP widget to make overseas calls: Gizmo5. Verdict: “nice.”

Joyriding the information superhighway in an ox-cart

These statistics are admittedly a bit old, but nothing significant has changed in the last six months. The overall picture is still incredibly maddening.

CAMBODIA – 44,000 Internet users as of April/07, 0.3% penetration. 1,000 broadband Internet connections as of Sept.30/07.

THAILAND – 8,465,800 Internet users as of Sept/07, 13.0% penetration. 105,000 broadband subscribers as of Sept.30/07.

LAOS – 25,000 Internet users as of Sept/06, 0.4% penetration. 100 broadband subscribers as of Sept.30/07.

VIETNAM – 18,226,701 Internet users as of Nov./07, 21.4% penetration. 1,205,262 broadband Internet connections as of Nov.30/07.

MYANMAR – 300,000 Internet users as of Oct/06, 0.6% penetration. 800 broadband subscribers as of Sept.30/07.

Bloody Laos and Myanmar have better Internet penetration than Cambodia. That’s a disgrace.

KhmerOS wins GKP Award

The groups efforts to make computing a native Khmer-language experience is turning heads.

KhmerOS has won the second prize in the prestigious international Stockholm Challenge GKP Award in the category “economic development”. The global recognition was awarded on 11. December 2007 in Kuala Lumpur/Malaysia by the two organizations “Global Knowledge Partnership (GKP)” and “The Stockholm Challenge”. The award is given for excellent examples of implementations of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) that show clear benefits to people and their communities, wide impact and sustainable business models.

Three cheers!

WIMAX for the masses

Borin surveys the landscape of Cambodia’s rapidly evolving 3G market.

With the success of CamGSM’s 3G mobile platform launched last year, its competitors are racing to provide this new mobile technology to its subscribers … Currently, 3G is the most affordable option for internet users, but at rate of US$40 plus VAT per month not many people can afford 3G. Hopefully, the Camshin’s service could heat up the competition and bring down the cost. … Including Cambodia Advance Communication there will be 5 mobile operators compete against each other for Cambodia market. Hopefully, next year 4 of the operators will provide 3G services … For internet users it is good news, because with more competitors in the 3G market would bring the cost of internet down.

Maybe Buddha has been listening.

POSTSCRIPT: If terms such as “3G” and “WIMAX” seem a bit hazy, thorough confusion is just a click away.

Free wireless Internet!

That’s what Vutha says. Surely there’s a catch?

Why does the MPTC hate Cambodians?

Thomas reports on Internet use in Cambodia.

As Channda Sok, CEO of ISP Angkor.net explained, its not just the problem of international connection to the word wide web. The main reason for the relatively high prices are the fees and taxes. From a 49 US$ sales prices the government got 37 US$ for renting the line. Per law its not allowed to use own land lines, she said. That makes it impossible to lower the prices, she said. For example, the governments renting costs of a line from Phnom Penh to Battambang is about 3000 US$ per month. You need a lot of costumers there to get a return of these costs.

The scenario offers a snapshot of the world-class stupidity that plagues the government at nearly every level. Instead of allowing business to prosper, and flood the economy with billions, the jack-booted thugs in control of the country appear happy to stand on the neck of commerce and filch pennies.

Khmer on your telephone

So sayeth Leepioo, who has instructions, keypad maps, links and everything else you need to know.

Khmer 2.0

To the average technosaur, it’s not quite clear how the new web site Khmer 2.0 works or what, exactly, it is supposed to do. The About Us says “Khmer 2.0 is a Web 2.0 open source content management system,” as if that explains things. It looks like some sort of social bookmarking site.

For all its ambiguity, however, Khmer 2.0 looks like a web site worth watching. The design is slick, with nifty clicky things. and already there are interesting links such as “Cambodia Khmer dictionary,” “Khmer Online Radio,” and “OpenOffice come with Khmer Check Spelling.” For bonus points, the Khmer Online Radio (http://www.khmeronlineradio.com/) even seems to work, unlike the Cambodia Khmer dictionary.

SubZ3rr0 ownz Vattanac Bank

Web sites get hacked. That’s just a fact of life. But when it’s your bank, it’s hard not to worry about the security of, you know, your actual money. Luckily for Vattanac customers, the bank didn’t have any online banking facilities, making it unlikely that customer data, or worse, got compromised.

Cambodian blogger summit

The Internet in Cambodia being what it is — criminally expensive and tragically slow — it really is nothing short of a minor miracle that blogging could become so popular as to necessitate a Cambodian Blogger Summit. But that’s exactly what’s going to happen come August 30-31, 2007.

The summit is a culmination of the work of the Cambodian bloggers team — Dee Dee, Vutha, Vireak, and Lux Mean, among others — who have over the last year organized a series of 14 workshops aimed at educating the masses about the wonderful powers of the blog.

Build[ing] upon the success of the 14 Workshops, the Cloggers Team is organizing a summit called “Cambodian Blogger Summit (aka Cloggers Summit)” on this coming 30-31 August 2007, to bring together students that has been well adopting lessons from the workshop, professional Bloggers, writers, NGO workers, media, and tech gurus from within and outside Cambodia to be together to share and learn more from each others on various topics regarding to the Internet and new technologies including Open Source Softwares and Web2.0 that would make their study, work, digital life more easier.

According to the summit’s blog, the group expects more than 100 Cambodian and international bloggers to attend, as well as dozens of media and IT professionals and related organizations. On the agenda are topics such as cyber safety, self-censorship, and e-community, podcasting, video blogging and Khmer unicode. Nothing about criminally expensive Internet prices, though, or the evil that is the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications. At least not yet, anyway.

Cambodia: One laptop per child

Lesley Stahl checks in on the current state of Nicholas Negroponte’s “One laptop per child” project. Actually, it sounds a lot less like reporting, and a lot more like she has just reprinted Negroponte’s bombast.

“The first English word of every child in that village was ‘Google’,” [Negroponte] says. “The village has no electricity, no telephone, no television. And the children take laptops home that are connected broadband to the Internet.”

When they take the laptops home, the kids often teach the whole family how to use it. Negroponte says the families loved the computers because, in a village with no electricity, it was the brightest light source in the house.

“Talk about a metaphor and a reality simultaneously,” he says. “It just illuminated that household.”

Once the computers were there, school attendance went way up.

Negroponte says that in Cambodia this year 50 percent more children showed up for the first grade because the kids who were in first grade last year told the other kids, “school is pretty cool.”

Attendance went up nationwide because one village got 50 laptops? Please.

The story also makes it sound like the OLPC project turned a remote, rice-farming village into an outpost of information technology. Anyone who has spent more than two seconds in a Cambodian village couldn’t help but be a little suspicious of such a claim. In the countryside, illiteracy is high, education levels are low, and English skills among the older generation are rare. All of which makes learning computer skills for adults in the village a rather involved process

The fact that the OLPC project has been so reticent to name the village seems to only underscores suspicions of meager success. Although mentioned once in the CBS story, the village name is often left out of press materials and news accounts. It is generally referred to simply as a “Cambodian village.” But if the pilot project in Reaksmy was everything that Negroponte claims, it seems unlikely that the project would be so conservative with promoting the fact.

Criminal communication

Research and Markets has the latest on Cambodia’s emerging telecommunications sector:

Continuing to shun fixed-line services, Cambodia’s healthy mobile market has passed the 1.5 million subscriber milestone and was continuing to grow at an annual rate of around 35% coming into 2007. Fixed-line services were languishing at around 42,000, with no sign of a revival in interest in this segment of the market. Surprisingly, given the apparent interest in communications, Internet penetration has remained particularly low, with the services on offer being notably expensive in comparison to other countries in the region. As the country’s efforts are directed towards strengthening its telecommunications infrastructure, Cambodia must continue to address its political problems and build its economy. Now that the country has entered a period of relative political stability, an increased effort is required to put the necessary administrative institutions and regulations in place. The telecom sector remains in need of serious regulatory reform. The good news is that foreign investor confidence appears to have returned and there are many positive signs that the economy is strengthening in a sustained manner.

Internet prices are “notably expensive”? No. Internet prices are extortionate. There ought to be a law.

Dot com dot kh

How hard could it be to get and manage a .kh internet domain name? According to Vireak, just follow his eight easy steps, pay a couple of bribes, wait a month for the paperwork to clear, and you’re all set — not hard at all!. The best part?

After the registration is done, the admin won’t allow the domain owner any control over the DNS…I’m not too pleased with this the domain owner is supposed to have control over his own domain. I got the feeling that the admin might hold the domain for ransom…and indeed it was

And no one in the government has any idea why Cambodia scores in the 93rd percentile for most corrupt countries in the world. Imagine that.

Policing the Internet

Unable or unwilling to tackle any real problems facing the country, the government continues to push forward with ever more bizarre morality laws. As today’s Cambodia Daily reports, the latest chuckleheaded scheme comes from the Minister of Post and Telecommunications, who wants to deploy police officers inside Internet cafes to catch porn surfers.

As part of a new push to enforce social morality, the government may soon have local authorities monitor activities inside Internet shops to stop the viewing of pornography, officials said Friday.

Minister of Post and Telecommunications So Khun said in a telephone interview that he is pushing for the police to take up the role in Internet monitors.

“Police should inspect and educate,” he said of Internet shop customers who download smut.

Police officers would never catch anybody, of course, because sane people do not generally commit crimes while the cops are watching. But that’s pretty much irrelevant.

Having some government goombah stand over your shoulder while you cruise the Internet constitutes an incredible invasion of privacy and plainly violates a litany of constitutional protections. Unfortunately, the government seems rather indifferent these days to public ridicule or the gross trampling of individual rights.

You would think at some point that policy makers would tire of being the laughing stock of the world community, and perhaps someday they will. In the meantime, Cambodian society continues to disintegrate under the weight of petty legislation while the majority of its citizens struggle to survive.

Ericsson moves in

According to the Bangkok Nation, global telephone giant Ericsson opened its first Cambodian office Monday.

Swedish telecom company Ericsson is upbeat about its business growth in Cambodia, thanks to the forecast growth of mobile-phone subscribers and the availability of third-generation (3G) licences.

The company opened its first office in the capital of Phnom Penh on Monday, in order to foster its operations and expand its market share there.

Ericsson had previously run its business in Cambodia from Thailand for 10 years.

Jan Signell, president of Ericsson Southeast Asia, cited analysts’ reports that the number of mobile-phone subscribers in Cambodia was expected to grow to more than 3 million by 2010, up from 1.4 million as of this past June.

For all the government does to encourage Thailand and Vietnam to move their environment-fouling factories into Cambodia, a lot more should be done to specifically attract high-profile internationals such as Ericsson. The legitimacy those companies give to the nation is priceless. Their presence alone can alter the perception that Cambodia is a lawless, corrupt and wildly unfriendly place to do business.

Poverty-reduction software

Using technology to help the poor is a promise still very much under development. Many grand ideas have come forth — One Laptop per Child, for instance — but thus far, success stories remain relatively modest and few.

Although in this particular case technology doesn’t directly help the poor, it has streamlined the workflow of Lotus Outreach International to such a degree that the organization now contributes to the lives of several thousand children instead of just a few hundred.

Aside from one paid consultant—a Program Director who resides in Asia, Lotus Outreach is run completely by volunteers. We’re spread over many time zones—California, New York, Australia, the UK, Hong Kong, Canada, India, Germany, France and Taiwan, but with only 2-5 individuals in each country.

Before finding Basecamp, managing our limited human resources was quite onerous and nearly impossible to do efficiently with email alone. Basecamp has allowed us to create a culture of collaboration, accountability and efficiency.

Over the past year, the number of children our projects reach has increased dramatically: from simple scholarship programs reaching a few hundred children we’ve moved to a development model that is making education possible for thousands of children from the slums of Delhi and impoverished villages of Cambodia.

That many of those children live in Cambodia just makes it that much nicer.