These days, there’s no chance of a company’s survival without an internet connection.

And 28-year-old Chim Chetra is the man who keeps that connection going, working as the Core Network Manager of the transmission team at NTC-Neocom ISP Limited.

The first thing he told me was that he worked during Chinese New Year because he was too afraid to be away from the office in case anything went wrong with the internet system.

NTC-Neocom provides their customers with a variety of internet services.

Chim Chetra’s primary responsibility at work is to monitor a series of fiber-optic cables that comprise the company’s internet system. If anything goes wrong, he and his group perform a diagnosis of the problem and fix it up.

“Consulting for and advising the technical team to be successful with the growth of the company, and ensuring solutions to meet customers’ requirements make up my job,” he said.

When a problem bypasses the Network Operation Centre, a team responsible for simple repairs including slow access and customer errors, Chim Chetra and his team are called in to do the job.

“Working for an internet service provider is complicated. We have to know key terms and understand the system,” Chim Chetra said.

Although Chim Chetra has no fear when it comes it to his tech skills, he does show trepidation when he’s asked about management.

“I just try and let my team work,” he said.

“There’s no need to continually ask them what’s going on. I wait for the results. I have to build a feeling of trust for all of our members.”

Chim Chetra graduated from the Royal University of Phnom Penh with a major in engineering and computer science, back in 2004. After that, he started working in the computer field for various companies.

Network engineering, an integral part of Chim Chetra’s job, is a process of monitoring the service provided and then optimising it for users.

“All our work is based from the network. The network is just like our organ system – if one system is broken, it affects all of the other systems included.”