Zarni Min Naing/MBT
Ooredoo Myanmar’s newly-appointed CEO Rene Meza said that the telecoms firm has invested K1.82 trillion ($1.4 billion) so far in Myanmar, making it the biggest investor in the country’s telecommunications sector.
During his first meeting with the media, new CEO Rene Meza shared some business updates including investment in social and community project, network coverage expansion and updated customer numbers.
Qatar-based Ooredoo started their service last August with 600 mobile towers and at the end of last year its mobile network covered 26 percent of the country.
“With nearly 2,500 sites, we are covering 71 percent of the country’s population now and by the end of the year we expect to have over 3,000 sites in total covering approximately 90 percent of the population. Generally, we are covering, 13 states and regions out of 15 including Naypyitaw,” Meza said.
However, he said 3,000 mobile towers will not be enough to cover the whole population of Myanmar. “We will build more mobile towers within 15 years.”
In terms of customer base, at the moment Ooredoo has nearly 5 million customers, Meza said. He said the firm has seen 15 times data usage growth and 10 times voice usage growth compared to last year.
“Ooredoo has about 1,000 employees at the moment and 900 are Myanmar and with our vendors, tower companies, suppliers, dealers we have indirectly created over 100,000 employments,” Meza said.
Ooredoo’s investment in social and community projects has been in excess of K4.8 billion ($3.73 million) across education, health and social welfare, he added.