Phnom Penh, Cambodia -- A new lottery operation based in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, has created an Internet technical "world first" by using the back office facilities of the Plus Lotto lottery of the tiny European Kingdom of Liechtenstein to create a high tech lottery operation in Cambodia.
The technical operations for the new Cambodian Royal Lotto "Mega Bucks" Internet lottery were set up using Cambodian resources and personnel with only one foreign adviser in Phnom Penh to assist in training and liaison. McCallum Lottery Consultants of Australia (McCallum@sydney.net) put together the deal with the Liechtenstein based Plus Lotto and the Royal Lotto of Cambodia as well as providing training for the Cambodian management and staff.
"The whole exercise went off remarkably smoothly considering we had a Filipino manager who cannot speak much Khmer but can speak English," said Glenn Barry, CEO of McCallum Lottery Consultants and Interactive Gaming News correspondent. "A Chinese technician who did not speak much English and no Filipino but could get by in Khmer and Thai. A Cambodian computer technician who did not speak, Filipino or Chinese but thank heavens could speak in DOS and some English. Then we had some very young and enthusiastic Cambodian staff who used a mixture of Khmer, Thai, Vietnamese, English, French and Microsoft Windows 95 computer speak to work it all out.
"We had power plugs and power boards, telephone cables and connections made to the standards of every country in the world, except Cambodia. Telephone lines installed by the French, destroyed by the Khmer Rouge, repaired by the Swedish and now operated by the Australians...somehow we managed . I managed to get by with only four adaptors between my laptop power supply and the mains power."
Operational support was provided by Adriaan Brink and his team at the Plus Lotto office in Liechtenstein and connected to Phnom Penh over the Internet using email to send training manuals for communicating instantly throughout training.
Cambodian staff training was conducted online over the World Wide Web, this allowed the Cambodian staff to connect to the Plus Lotto Internet site and train in real time with a fully operational Lottery. The Cambodian Royal Lotto could, thus, have direct access to highly skilled technicians and experts in Liechtenstein without the cost of flying in a team to Cambodia. The five-hour time difference between Cambodia and Liechtenstein allowed Cambodian staff to train online late in the afternoon in Phnom Penh under the online supervision of lottery managers in Liechtenstein.
Even graphics for use in Cambodia were created and sent via email or downloaded from the Plus Lotto site before being translated or modified to suit local Cambodian conditions. The logo design for the lottery was created from a base design sent from Cambodia to Liechtenstein via email. From there it was sent email to London, England where marketing expert James Tucker (who just happened to be in Switzerland) briefed a computer graphics designer (who was in London) to add more "lottery promotional look" to the design before emailing the final design back to Cambodia. In Cambodia the Khmer language elements were added to finish off the job and print it out for use locally, all without leaving the confines of cyberspace.
A televised draw will take place each Friday at 3:55 p.m. in Liechtenstein ( 8:55 p.m. Cambodian time), and will be transmitted over the World Wide Web using RealPlayer 5.0. Cambodians will be able to watch the draw live at the Royal Lotto office in Phnom Penh. If the direct Web connection fails the TV draw can be sent as an email attachment RealPlayer file to be shown later.
The Internet service is provided by the Phnom Penh based Telstra BigPond Internet Service Provider (ISP). Its senior staff worked alongside the Royal Lotto staff in setting up the Internet connection. Telstra BigPond Internet Services Cambodia now has a staff of 8 and has some 500 Cambodian users of their service which was established in June 1997, just under 11 months ago. The Internet service uses the Intelsat Satellite to transmit data to Sydney, Australia, where the Cambodian feed connects to the Australian Telstra BigPond Internet backbone. The service can provide 33.6 kbps connectivity provided a clean local phone line is available. In early testing average speeds of 26.4 kbps were achieved.
Telstra BigPond Cambodia charges a flat rate of US$120 per month for frequent users which allows 18 access hours, additional hours cost US$5.00.
The "Mega Bucks" Internet lottery, run by Plus Lotto, is expected to be popular with foreign workers as well as Cambodians. They will be able to play a European style Lotto at the Royal Lotto Phnom Penh office, entries will cost 2,500 riel per game, or US$ 0.65 cents.
The largest "Mega Bucks" prize was almost 4 billion Cambodian riel, (just over US$1 million, an absolute fortune in Cambodian terms where a factory worker earns just on US$500 a year. US$1 million would represent some 2,000 years income.
The Plus Lotto operation is run by the International Lottery in Liechtenstein Foundation, a charitable organization that supports the International Federation Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies with the profits made from Internet Lotteries.