Foreign telecoms providers get second chance
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Leading telecommunication companies that did not win operating licences in June this year have been invited to join hands with the Myanmar Post and Telecommunications (MPT), according to the UK's Financial Times.
The Financial Times reported that Orange and Vodafone are among the list of foreign operators who have been invited to form private partnerships with the state-owned MPT. They will be allowed to work independently from the company’s rules and regulations.
While Singtel has also been approached, it is unclear whether or not Digicel has also been invited.
Norway’s Telenor and Qatar’s Ooredoo won a competitive tender for two mobile operating licences in June and are expected to start operations next year as the first private mobile providers in Myanmar.
Although both companies stated they would start selling SIM cards and offer their services eight months after winning the bid, the government still has not granted them their licences.
Ooredoo has been seeking to share transmitter towers with Telenor to save costs.
Currently, only 11.1 per cent of Myanmar citizens have access to a phone, but the government plans to increase ownership to 75-80 per cent by 2016.
MPT plans to cooperate with Telenor, Ooredoo and other operators to expand the telecoms network and build over 80,000 transmission towers across the country. Some foreign research groups say that the phone network will only cover 50 per cent of the population by 2015.
