Cellphone Antennas
Australia has five telephone companies to cover the whole continent. Cambodia has twenty-nine telephone companies. And all of them except the government-run company are only cellphones; they have no fixed lines or landlines. Since each company needs its own system of microwave cellphone towers, there are thousands of these antennas throughout the kingdom. Cellphone technology uses microwave frequencies, and this part of the spectrum is line-of-sight, i.e., each antenna in a company's network needs to be within sight of the next antenna. For some reason the cellphone towers in Cambodia are very low, usually no more than four or five stories, so a greater number of towers is needed to create the series of cells in which the phones operate. Here are some pictures of some of the numerous cellphone towers in Phnom Penh. The one to the right is on a house across from Charlie's home. Most Cambodians have little aesthetic sense when it comes to the outdoors and most of them want money, so they are all too happy to negotiate a contract that puts a tower on top of their home.
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