violet wrote: ↑Tue Jul 26, 2022 10:29 pm Their presence is prolific through guesthouses and multi-storey apartment blocks that offer free wifi

Do you mean 4G boosters, or wifi repeaters?

It would not be surprising if the market were flooded with poor quality devices for either service, courtesy of our friends up norf.

One to five years prison seems very reasonable.

violet wrote: ↑Wed Jul 27, 2022 1:17 am

violet wrote: ↑Tue Jul 26, 2022 10:29 pm Their presence is prolific through guesthouses and multi-storey apartment blocks that offer free wifi

Repeaters
But I may have merged boosters and repeaters when registering the existence of a device. I doubt myself now you have queried but memory has them stored as repeaters

I would hazard a guess that the ministry is concerned with Cellphone signal boosters, and not wifi boosters/repeater/extenders.

The cellular network is reliant on towers, which are the domain of the Cellular companies. Dotted around everywhere. In some places, there are gaps in cellular coverage, and either poor 4G, 3G, or even basic cellular signal.

Some areas will have better coverage, because of consumer demand- the various antenna equipment is going to be costly, and require maintenance, so commercially pointless if the target audience is 1000sheep, whereas 1000 phone subscribers on Facebook 18hrs a day means revenue.
Another reason for gaps is environment. The tower has to go somewhere. So, in the middle of Tonle Sap, cell reception is going to be lower than in the middle of Siem Reap. The nearest towers are further away, and signal is attenuated with distance. Ideally, as you move further away from one tower, your phone will connect with another.
Range of signal measured in kilometres.
This is where boosters may be useful. But only if properly controlled. If they are indiscriminately installed without thought about location, they’ll be creating artificial cell towers, all jockeying for connection. And resulting in disruption.

Wi-fi on the other hand, is how you connect to a local internet network router. Some confusion comes when the term Wi-fi is used interchangeably but erroneously, to describe cellular internet connection. Wi-if signal tends to be of the order of 100~200meters. It is also heavily dependent on location. Concrete walls will rapidly attenuate signal strength, even to the point of the router being directly outside a hotel room, but signal inside being less than half strength.
Thus, repeaters. I have one, here. Back in the UK, at my mothers place, I have 3. Hers is an old house, with solid walls. Modern houses often being flimsier don’t kill the signal so quickly. I also have an office/workshop at the end of her garden, which is too far for even the first repeater, so I have a second.

Communications repeaters and boosters are not uncommon. In the old days of Morse code, an intermediate station might copy the message, and transmit it again, to be received at the intended station.
Nowadays, we have satellite networks. But as technology improves, there’s often a downside. A lot of communications are reliant on line of sight. Put a mountain, or a building in the way, and signal can be lost.

So think about this. Smart at home is a 4G router, that receives a cellular signal, and produces a local Wi-fi network. The connection to the Smart router might be perfect, and you’ll have a maximum strength wi-if connection to that router. But if you aren’t in a Smart reception area, your smart Router will not have a connection to the Smart 4G network.