Cambodia bans call bonuses

I got an SMS from Smart Axiata this morning at 1:09 am to inform its clients "Due to Prakas 232 we are presently not allowed to provide any call bonuses. We seek your understanding & support. Thank you for using Smart. Info: smart.com.kh".

This is not the first time, we remember last few years when Beeline came to Cambodia's market, it offered $0.05 per minute to call both across and within networks. Then it was rejected from Cellcard for interconnected calls. Later soon the royal government involved to solve this issue and banned to offer $0.05 rate anymore by set the maximize rate not lower than $0.07 for across network calls to all mobile operators in Cambodia. I am not sure whether it is a reason that VimpelCom exited Cambodia last week.

Now we are banned from call bonuses (or free calls) and seem we are far away from the free market economy. Government should care about its people's benefits rather than the businessmen. Users are not happy with this news and some mobile operators as well because they will be faced difficulty to compete with the bigger and older ones.