The Kingdom of Cambodia, an emerging country, has seen development from various directions in recent years, particularly in the Mekong region around the capital city Phnom Penh. The development resulted in ever-increasing demand for communication in the region, and in order to meet the demand, communications networks had to be expanded and stabilized.
In December 2007, the KDDI Foundation signed an agreement with Telecom Cambodia, a Cambodian telecommunications operator, to provide consulting service for developing a regional trunk communications network, and began operation in the country. In order to provide the consulting service, a consortium was formed with I.S. International Inc.
In March 2012, a royal decree bill concerning the establishment of the Telecom Regulator of Cambodia (TRC), which was a condition for yen loans to come into effect, was passed and adopted by the Parliament of Cambodia. Afterward, the opening ceremony of TRC was held on September 20, 2012, when the regulatory agency began operation in name and in reality to create a fair and competitive environment for information and communications in Cambodia.
Since April 2012, the establishment of TRC had resulted in the full-scale progress of this project and the completion of bidding, contractor selection, and procurement contract signing concerning the procurement of communications trunk network facilities and services.
This project was completed in October 2018. It made significant contributions to the development of the country through several efforts: completing trunk communications infrastructure consisting of 460-kilometer optical fibers laid from Kampong Cham in the north to Sihanoukville in the south via the capital city of Phnom Penh; developing the city's high-capacity, circular, fiber-optic transmission lines (metro ring) and the IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) that serves as the core of the next-generation public communications network; and significantly improving Internet access in major cities by introducing optical access networks.
