President's spokesperson Ye Htut
has confirmed today that SIM cards will be sold for a couple of
thousand kyats in April, marking a significant drop from the current
retail price.
There have been reports of the President
Office's Minister Soe Thein as saying that SIM card prices will be a
lot lesser than 20,000 kyats (US$23) and sold for a couple of thousand
kyats. So, he asked the minister for confirmation and is now informing
other media about the confirmation, Ye Htut told Eleven Media.
GSM SIM cards were last sold for 200,000
kyats (US$226), but Myanmar Posts and Telecommunications department
(MPT) have suspended the sales operations now.
"I heard that (there have been rumors
of) the phone cards to be sold for a couple of thousand kyats on the
Internet. I don't know for sure. We haven't received any instructions
telling us to sell at a specific price," Htay Win, chief engineer of
MPT's Mobile Department said yesterday.
Earlier last month, rumors have been
spreading that GSM SIM cards will be sold for 20,000 (US$23) kyats, but
now rumors say that GSM SIM cards will be sold for 2,000 kyats (US$2)
while WCDMA SIM cards will be for 5,000 kyats ($6).
The new mobile phone number also rumored to be extended to an extra 1-digit from the current 10-digit.
In 2002, MPT introduced GSM SIM cards
for 500,000 kyats (US$566), but the price later increased to 1 million
kyats (US$1,131) and then 1.5 million kyats (US$1697).
MPT first reduced the price to 500,000 kyats (US$566) in February 2011 and then to 200,000 kyats (US$226) in April last year.
Statistics shows that MPT has sold about 6 million SIM cards up to last year.
source: Eleven Myanmar
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