Although we sometimes choose to go without a local SIM card when travelling, we decided that it would be pretty essential for our three weeks in Cambodia.
It proved to be the right call - and buying it as soon as we arrived in the country at Phnom Penh Airport was relatively easy. A number of tourist prepaid SIM card packages are offered by the largest phone companies in Cambodia, lasting from a few days to a month, and those are what every traveller should purchase for their trip.
In this post, we've outlined the key details on how to purchase your Cambodian SIM card at Phnom Penh International Airport, with info on the data bundles available, the costs involved, and a few mistakes to avoid.
· · ·
Why Buy Your SIM Card at Phnom Penh Airport?
Once you've sorted out your Cambodian tourist visa and collected your baggage, you'll walk through the doors into the main arrivals halls in the international terminal.
It's a compact space and, between the calls from taxi and tuk-tuk drivers, you'll easily see the collection of official mobile phone company kiosks in the corner on your right hand side.
Their bright red, pink, orange, and vomit-green sign help them stand out!
When we were buying our SIM at Phnom Penh airport in February 2020, there were four mobile phone companies present: Metfone, Smart, Yes Seatel, and cellcard.
They're all established telecoms companies in Cambodia, and all offer traveller-specific SIM card deals at the airport. Although you could source your SIM card in Phnom Penh at a mobile shop or at the reception of some backpacker hostels, you will be limited to one or two bundle options or a single company's offering. It's also not possible to access some of the better traveller data bundles which are only offered at the airport.
Lastly, you don't want to have to waste time trying to find a SIM card once you're in downtown Phnom Penh when you can get it all set-up in under 5 minutes.
That's the main reason, aside from the fact that the whole process takes less than five minutes, to buy your SIM card at the airport rather than in Phnom Penh itself
Cambodia SIM Cards for Travellers
For the purposes of this post, we went to each company to make a note of the deals on offer. All offer 4G LTE coverage, a really decent amount of data, and the SIM card is included for free. From traveller reviews, network coverage from all of the companies is pretty similar in the destinations which travellers will visit on a 2-3 week Cambodia itinerary (article coming soon, promise).
Note that all prices are in USD.
Metfone | The Phnom Penh airport SIM card deals were $5 for 40 GB data for 7 days; $7 for 40 GB data for 14 days; $12 for 100 GB data for 30 days.
Smart | The advertised Smart Traveller SIM airport deal was $6 for 21 GB data for 7 days. Their standard offering is better however at $3 for 25GB across 7 days, $5 for 35GB across 15 days, or $10 for 60GB across 30 days - view here.
Yes Seatel | The Mobile Tourist Pass bundles are $3 for 3 days of unlimited data ; $5 for 5 days of unlimited data; $10USD for 10 days of unlimited data. However, these only include $0.5, $1, and $2.5 of non-internet calls for the period.
cellcard | Their main tourist SIM card pack costs $6 and provides 5 GB data per day plus $50 worth of calls per day - these allowances only last for 7 days. If staying for longer than 7 days, you would have to top up with a data bundle for $2-$10. During our visit to the airport, they did not offer any better bundle than this one.
As you can see, all of the Cambodia tourist SIM card bundles offer an excellent amount of data for a cheap upfront price.
However, it's worth bearing in mind that the companies do put on special airport prepaid SIM card deals for travellers to compete with each other for custom, so you may find something worse / better when you're there*.
The main thing to look out for is the length of time for which your data bundle is actually valid. As we were in Cambodia for nearly a month, we went for the 30 days for $12 plan with metfone. Members of our G Adventures group however went for different deals without realising the 7 day limitation on data, and it proved a bit of complicated process to top-up.
For some of the above bundles, the SIM card may actually only work for 7 days in total.
Therefore, if you are going to be in Cambodia for 8-12 days, it's easier to just buy the a bundle which last for 15 days.
Lastly, the majority of the tourist SIM card bundles include either no phone-to-phone call minutes, or only a very small amount. We found this out to our own detriment when our boatman left us stranded in Koh Rong Sanloem and wasn't on Whatsapp. It transpired that our cracking metfone deal didn't include any 'airtime' or minutes, so we had to top up our Skype credit and call his mobile phone that way. It's probably not going to be a major issue for you, but it's worth knowing ahead of time and having some minutes included would have been useful.
However, we can happily recommend the metfone SIM card for Cambodia as it provided reliable and pretty fast connection speeds for us across the country (except in certain rural blackspots).
*If you find out of major price changes or better deals at the airport from these companies - let us know in the comments!
How To Activate Your Cambodia SIM Card At The Airport
You can only pay in cash for your airport SIM card, either USD or Cambodian riel. We had to show our passports to buy our SIM cards with metfone, and we assume that would be the case with all the other telecom companies.
The staff at the mobile phone company kiosks all spoke a level of basic English to deal with our queries and help us out.
To use your Cambodia SIM card, you will need an unlocked phone which can take SIM cards not linked to your usual telecoms provider. If you're not certain about whether your phone is unlocked (usually because you received it as part of a fixed monthly contract), get in touch with your provider before you leave your home country.
Many smartphones also now have a 'dual sim card' holder, so you may not even have to swap out your usual card for the the Cambodian SIM.
Due to our awareness of a popular tourist scam in India, we always recommend validating your SIM card before you leave the shop or place you purchased it. Therefore, in Phnom Penh Airport, we strongly recommend asking the vendor to set the Cambodian SIM up on your phone and to verify that the data is activated and working before you travel onward to Phnom Penh.
At Metfone, we handed over our phone to the lady behind the glass, and the activation process only took a couple of minutes.
