Is Cambodia's 5G era coming? In fact, we have to wait 5-10 years!

Recently, we often see news about 5G on major media platforms in Cambodia. On February 27, Minister of Posts and Telecommunications Tram Evteuk  inspected the 5G sites and facilities of Cellcard Telecom, Royal Group of Cambodia and experienced broadband with speed of 1.6 GB per second on site. Opening the 5G experience to the outside world meant that Cambodia's 5G entered a new stage.

Cambodia is the first country in ASEAN to use 5G. The use of 5G can not only accelerate domestic economic transformation and maintain rapid and stable economic growth, but also play an important role in driverless cars, VR, the Internet of Things and real estate.

5G is of great significance to Cambodia and will also bring new changes to Cambodian social life. As the 5G process accelerates, everyone is looking forward to the application of 5G?

Recently, a spokesman for the Cambodian telecommunications regulator said that "5G is still a dream, and 5G is still in the testing stage. In order to learn from experience and ensure the speed is the same as foreign technology, 4G will still have an advantage in the next 5 to 10 years."

At present, Cambodia is dominated by 4G networks, but the experience is not so well, and the connection is not stable. The 4G signal speed is the same as 3G. There is sometimes no WIFI signal, let alone download speed.

According to the Cambodia Mobile Network Experience Report in August 2019, Cambodia's 4G market is a regional leader in user access, but ranks 10th lowest in terms of global download speed.

With the advent of the 5G era, everyone has great expectations for high-speed, high-bandwidth, low-latency networks. When will Cambodia achieve high-speed downloads? When will 5G be fully covered? 5G has become a hot topic for Internet users.

According to relevant experts, although Cambodia is the first country to use 5G in ASEAN, it is still at the preliminary testing level. Although 5G is very mature at the technical and theoretical levels, there are still many difficulties and problems to fully implement in Cambodia.

1. Need to build 5G base stations on a large scale. If you want to popularize 5G networks, you must build a large number of 5G base stations. At present, about 80% of existing base stations in Cambodia cannot meet the requirements of 5G base stations. It also takes a lot of time to cover 5G networks in Cambodia's vast land.

2. Requires high-cost inputs. Compared with 4G and other old equipment, the cost of 5G base stations is more expensive. With the same capital investment, the cost of building a 5G base station is 3 times higher than that of a 4G base station. The full coverage of 5G networks requires the construction of more base stations, and the urgent need for further policy, funding and market support from the government, society and equipment vendors. In addition, the energy consumption of 5G base stations is also very high. At present, Cambodia's infrastructure equipment cannot carry it that is a difficult problem.

3. The profit model is uncertain. Up to now, several telecommunication network operators in Cambodia have planned and built new 5G networks. The earliest is Smart Axiata, a well-known telecommunications network operator in Cambodia. Last year, it cooperated with Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei to conduct the first 5G technology test in Cambodia. Although there are more and more operators joining the 5G construction, if the corresponding industry is not developed, it will not be able to bring profits, which will also impede the construction momentum of the operators.

The implementation of 5G does not happen overnight, and requires a long process. Problems in any aspect of 5G construction will lead to less-than-expected results and problems such as poor user experience, delayed application scenarios, insufficient appeal, and high cost thresholds. In addition, there are some specific situations in Cambodia, such as: unstable power supply systems, disputes over the potential health impact of base stations, and inadequate infrastructure such as roads and sewer systems, all the factors affecting the process of comprehensive 5G coverage.

5G is fully realistic in Cambodia and may not be so fast. However, 5G has become a technology that the whole world attaches importance to. The popularization of 5G networks is the general trend. With the rapid development of Cambodia's economy and the improvement of the implementation of broadband infrastructure, the 5G era will soon come.