Zarni Min Naing/MBT
The government expects to select the fourth telecommunication operator in the months of June or July, an official said.
U Chit Wai, deputy permanent secretary of the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT) and a member of the Tender Selection Committee, told Myanmar Business Today, “One of the foreign companies will be selected out of three pre-selected companies. Seven companies have applied for tender so far. We expect to announce the winners in June or July.”
The seven companies that have applied for the fourth teleco licence are Singapore-based Singtel, Viettel from Vietnam, China Telecom and Xinwei from China, French telecoms firm Free, South Africa’s MTN and 1COM from Hong Kong.
The addition of a new telecom company is intended to improve the quality of telecommunication services and offer affordable pricing for both the rural and urban population, the government announced earlier.
Currently, state-run Myanmar Posts and Telecommunications (MPT), Qatar’s Ooredoo and Norway’s Telenor have operator licences, and cover about 70 percent of the country’s population.
“The government will allow four operators at most. Such invitation is good for competition in the telecommunication sector. If the fourth operator could provide new services that are yet to be available from the previous three, it might work,” MPT’s Marketing Manager U Thein Hote told Myanmar Business Today.
The winner of the tender will have to work with a consortium of 11 local companies and a government stakeholder.
“Having one more operator will be good for users. There will be more competition and more benefits for users. Currently, there are three which is better than the monopoly we had before. Now, we have better services for voice, but there is still some weaknesses in terms of data charges and the internet speed,” Ko Phyo Wai Soe, a software developer working for an IT firm, told Myanmar Business Today.
From: Myanmar Business Today