Leading telecoms provider CamGSM Co Ltd is ready for a full-fledged launch of 5G as a component of the government’s vision for Industry 4.0 and enabling the transformation towards a digital economy as a new engine of growth, the parent company’s chairman Kith Meng said on Wednesday.

He was speaking to Royal Cambodian Armed Forces (RCAF) deputy commander-in-chief Lieutenant General Hun Manet and his delegation during a special visit to CamGSM to discuss its readiness for 5G.

CamGSM operates under the trademark Cellcard and is owned by the Kingdom’s largest conglomerate Royal Group of Companies Ltd.

The visit included a thorough update on CamGSM’s readiness for 5G including a live demonstration of its 5G Standalone (SA) site which has been on air since October last year and now reaching speeds of more than 1.8Gbps – the highest ever logged in the Kingdom.

Meng said 5G will be a giant leap forward for the economy and that the Kingdom must strive to embrace the technology and enable it to better contribute to economic development, industrial enrichment and the improvement of people’s lives.

He said: “We want Cambodia to be a shining light for 5G in ASEAN and for Cambodian companies, big and small, to be early adopters of the technology.”

The Royal Group’s Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Division will lead the digitalisation of the Kingdom in support of the government’s roadmap for Industry 4.0, he said.

As the only Cambodian-owned group of ICT companies, Royal Group provides a crucial line of support to the government, national security and economic stability, he added.

Since its inception in 1996, CamGSM has served the people of the Kingdom and has remained 100 per cent Cambodian-owned as it upgraded from 2G through 3G, 4G to 5G.

The number of active mobile phone subscriptions across the Kingdom’s six operators was 20,481,051 as of the end of May, inching down 0.08 per cent year-on-year, data from the Telecommunication Regulator of Cambodia show.

This figure is the equivalent of 124.09 per cent of the total population.

At the same time, the number of landline and fixed-line subscriptions numbered just 52,480 as of the end of May, slipping 21.62 per cent from the end of May last year.

The number of mobile internet subscriptions across Cambodia’s seven providers also recorded a 2.36 per cent drop to 14,863,435, whereas fixed broadband internet subscriptions across the Kingdom’s 37 providers logged a 33.07 per cent climb to 249,132.

Meanwhile the number of Facebook users in the Kingdom reached 10.95 million, TRC data show.