Cam Towerlink: Increasing connectivity in Cambodia

Continuing our coverage of the Cambodian tower market, we recently caught up with Yusoff Zamri, CEO of Cam Towerlink, a new entrant to the Cambodian tower market, and discussed their first project providing wireless connectivity to the Angkor Wat temple grounds, a UNESCO World Heritage site, for the first time. With over 23 years of telecoms experience covering both the operator side with Celcom, Hello Axiata and Uzmacom, and the vendor side with Lucent Technologies, Schlumberger Network Solutions and ZTE, Yusoff is now responsible for launching Cam Towerlink’s services in this competitive telecoms market.

TowerXchange: Please tell us about Cam Towerlink and its background.

We came to Cambodia in 2014,  focusing on the tower business, providing services including tower rollouts, power solutions, IBS, COW (Cellular on Wheels) and BTS hotels. We have a staff of ten all based in Cambodia, and we are founded  by a group of three shareholders in Malaysia, which also created an IT company called Mutiara Teknologi, which was responsible for rolling out the 999 emergency service in Malaysia. After the success of this large project the shareholders  wanted to explore other opportunities outside of IT and in other markets, and decided to invest in the tower industry.

TowerXchange: What can you tell us about your recent project to provide connectivity at Angkor Wat?

Companies have been trying to provide coverage within the restricted area of Angkor Wat since 2007, and no-one has succeeded until now. I know this as I was the CEO of Hello Axiata from 2007-2009 and I was not not successful back then. For Angkor Wat we are rolling out camouflaged tower structures around the temple site to provide a good signal for visitors. We have approval to deploy six towers to start with on the temple grounds, and then our plan is to expand into the surrounding area and provide coverage within the temple itself. More than likely, this will require a camouflaged BTS hotel solution. We’ve started the initial deployment now and this should be up and running by June. The project also includes 30km of fibre, which will connect all of the sites into a ring. We’re talking to six potential tenants, and we expect to have an average of four tenants per tower once the expansion takes place. We plan to add a common antenna for all tenants on the towers; this would be the ideal scenario but it would depend on all operators agreeing to have the antennae pointing in the same directions. We expect to have this finalised and operational by June as all of the operators are keen to start providing coverage on this new site. I believe this is a good start for Cam Towerlink.

TowerXchange: What will be the next project for Cam Towerlink?

We have started initial surveys into the surrounding Angkor Wat area; we’re looking at over twenty potential sites which are spread over a wide area, but we need approval from the authorities managing the temple. We’re engaged in ongoing discussions with the authorities, and with the operators that are interested.  We are of course looking at areas covering the whole of Cambodia as well.  Concurrently we are looking into acquiring any tower assets we can in Cambodia, and there are assets available around the country.

TowerXchange: What can you tell us about the telecoms regulation that was passed in Cambodia recently? What has the impact on the market been so far?

The new telecoms law was passed in January of 2016. It’s generally perceived as good news, and it gives the government guidelines for managing telecoms in Cambodia. Now the government can properly regulate this industry and can levy fines or jail terms for non-compliance, so it’s being taken quite seriously.

The Cambodian government is actively promoting tower sharing and wants to see it implemented like in Malaysia, and to have the collaboration of the operators and towercos. There is a lot of legacy infrastructure in urban areas, and the government is pushing with this new law to have this updated or replaced and to reduce overlaps. The New Telecom Law had been discussed since 2007, so it’s a major step forward that it has finally been implemented.

TowerXchange: How is the tower market in Cambodia? Do you see demand increasing?

edotco and Cam Towerlink are the only towercos in Cambodia at this point; edotco is the leader with over one thousand towers. Cam Towerlink is just getting into the market with the Angkor Wat project, and the plan is to expand into other areas soon, and also to acquire assets. We have been in talks with Viettel who have some assets to dispose of, as a result of their takeover of Beeline last year.

There are also three new Chinese operators in Cambodia, Seatel, Cootel and Emaxx, that are all in expansion mode. Some of them are building towers and we are in discussions with them about potential partnerships. We are of course talking to the rest of mobile operators (Viettel, Mobitel, Smart and Qb) to see how we can support them in Cambodia.

TowerXchange: What do you expect to happen next in the Cambodian market?

It depends how the implementation of the new law progresses and remains to be seen how the regulator wants to proceed. It will take time but the regulator is definitely more ‘gung-ho’ since the law was passed. It’s not perfect, but now they have a real platform to regulate the telecoms industry in Cambodia which can only be an improvement.