Strong local appetite for fourth mobile licence in Myanmar

Seventeen local firms in Myanmar are reported to have applied to be part of a consortium that will operate the country’s fourth mobile phone network.

A Reuters report quoted Chit Wai, a deputy permanent secretary at the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology, as saying “the next step after selecting local partners will be appointing an international consulting firm to help select a foreign partner for the joint venture”.

Local public companies with registered capital of at least US$2.3 billion were invited to state their interest in the licence, which will be valid for 15 years and will be granted by the end of the year.

There is no limit on how many firms can join and the winner is to be announced in September.

The country already has three operators up and running: MPT-KDDI, a joint venture between the telecom ministry and Japan’s KDDI, which has 50 per cent market share, Telenor (34 per cent market share) and Ooredoo (15 per cent market share), according to GSMA Intelligence. Telenor, in particular, is growing rapidly. At end-June, it counted 9.5 million subscribers.

The country has rapidly reached a penetration rate of 27.5 per cent (Q2 2015).