Cambodia has traditionally only two official gateways for international telephone calls:
- 001: Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications (MPTC) / Telecom Cambodia (T.C.)
- 007: Royal Telecam International (RTI), subsidiary of MobiTel, also known as TELE2
Calling through either of these gateways is very expensive (usually more than one dollar per minute).
Fortunately all GSM mobile phone network operators in Cambodia have introduced a cheaper alternative for making international calls. It is often based on voice-over-IP (VOIP) technology. See the table below for information about each operator:
| Operator brand (link to website) |
Number prefixes |
International dialing prefix (put before country code) | Link to international call prices |
|---|---|---|---|
| Beeline | 090, 068, 067 | 179 | prices |
| Cellcard / Mobitel | 012, 092, 017, 089, 077 | 177 | prices |
| Hello / TMIC | 015, 016, 081 | 166 | prices |
| MetFone | 097, 088 | 168 or + | prices |
| Mfone / Camshin | 011, 099, 085 | 165 | prices |
| qbMore | 013, 080, 083, 084 | + | prices |
| Smart Mobile | 010, 093 | + | prices |
| Star-Cell | 098, 086 | + | prices |
Many of the older cell phone operators will route your calls through one of the official expensive international gateways (either 001 or 007) if you do not enter a special dialing prefix before the country code. The prefix number varies from operator to another.
Some of the newer operators will route the call through their own less expensive gateways by just dialing the standard plus sign (+) before the foreign country code.
How to make an international phone call?
The proper way to dial is as follows:
- prefix – country code – number within country (without the local long distance prefix)
The following example shows how to dial international calls with different operators without going through the expensive gateways (001 or 007). In this example we are trying to get in touch with the Queen of England. Her Majesty’s office’s phone number is 020 7930 4832 within England and the country code for England is 44. Note that we always need to remove the national long-distance prefix (number 0 in this case as in most countries) if it is included in the number. The standard way of writing this number in international format would be +44 20 7930 4832. This number (with the plus sign) works with every operator, but many mobile operators route this number through an expensive international gateway unless you dial as listed below (depending on your operator):
- Beeline: 179 44 20 7930 4832
- Cellcard / Mobitel: 177 44 20 7930 4832
- Hello / TMIC: 166 44 20 7930 4832
- MetFone: +44 20 7930 4832
- Mfone / Camshin: 165 44 20 7930 4832
- qbMore: +44 20 7930 4832
- Smart Mobile: +44 20 7930 4832
- Star-Cell: +44 20 7930 4832
How about international text messages?
Please note that if you are sending international text messages (SMSes), in most cases you should just use the standard international number (with the plus sign) instead of the operator-specific international dialing prefix. Text messages are often routed differently from voice calls within the operators’ systems.
Prices for the traditional 001 and 007 gateways
For reference, here is a link to MPTC 001 gateway prices. On the other hand the operator of 007 gateway, Royal Telecam International / TELE2 seems to be unable to list their prices at their web site at the time of writing this article. They have a fancy flash animation which basically just says that their site is under construction until August 2009 (which was 5 months ago already at the time of writing this article). The page which is supposed to list the prices to various international destinations just says “undefined” for everything. Not very convincing in my humble opinion. Why not forget the stupid flash animation crap and use the efforts to put some real information up there? Or maybe they do not want their customers to know their prices?
There is also a new international gateway 009 by Metfone / Viettel, but I am unsure if any operators than Metfone itself are using it.
Updated on 2010-02-23 to include the new Beeline prefix 067.
Updated on 2010-11-11 to include the Metfone prefix 088 and qb prefix 080.