Cambodia's first merger of mobile operators announced

PHNOM PENH, Dec 06, 2010 (Xinhua via COMTEX) -- Cambodia's two mobile phone operators will merge their operations from March next year, according to a joint statement Monday.

Smart Mobile and Star-Cell will merge their operations under Smart Mobile to become one of the market leaders, the first merger among Cambodia's mobile operators.

It stated that Smart Mobile will become, with this combination, one of the market leaders with more than 850,000 subscribers and aims to be a market leader both in subscriber base and new subscriptions through its further aggressive growth and strong market presence.

"Our subscribers will enjoy the benefits of the merger without any change of telephone numbers and SIM cards," said the press release.

Smart Mobile's network will, after both networks have been combined, serve 23 out of 24 provinces of Cambodia and will extend to the remaining province in the course of 2011.

The completion of the transaction is, subject to final approval by Cambodian authorities, expected to be in December 2010, and the finalization of the network combination by March 2011.

Cambodia currently has 9 mobile phone operators with more than 6 million users, according to the statistics from the Ministry of Post and Telecommunication.