Sigve Brekke, managing director of
Norway-based Telenor Asia, which oversees Thailand's second biggest
mobile phone operator, Dtac, will soon have a big task in Myanmar as
Telenor has been chosen as one of the two concession winners.
The Norwegian firm was one of the 11
finalists in the international bidding for two concessions to be granted
by the Myanmar government to build a green-field nationwide mobile
telecom network.
Brekke says: "Back in 2002, I was a
co-CEO of Dtac in Thailand together with Khun Vichai Bencharongkul (a
founder of Dtac). For two years, we worked together. After that Khun
Vichai went back to his family business." "Dtac started as a small
company whose image was rather boring - like an old sick lady. We tried
to change our image by launching the Happy Dprompt and Khon Dee
campaigns which were quite successful.
We also changed our corporate and office
culture to send the message that we wanted to be an innovative, fun or
"sanook"and "sa-buy sa-buy" company."
"In business, we don't have to be
formal. The dress code is informal so we managed to come up with new
ideas, services etc. In the end, we narrowed the gap with AIS, which was
the market leader. Now, Dtac is No 2 with a market share of 37 per
cent. In terms of the number of subscribers, Dtac has more than 26
million out of the 100 million or so number of subscribers in Thailand."
"In terms of revenue, ours is about
Bt110 billion annually or 35-36 per cent of the industry's total
revenue. In fact, Dtac is the biggest unit in the whole Telenor group -
bigger than Telenor's revenue in Norway. After Thailand, Malaysia is the
second biggest market for Telenor and Norway is No 3."
"In Asia, we cover Thailand, Malaysia,
Bangladesh, India, Pakistan. Myanmar is our next target. We're bidding
for one of the two licences in Myanmar which is one of the last places
in Asia where most people don't have a mobile phone.
"Of the 60 million population in Myanmar, only 5-6 per cent have phones and one Sim card costs Bt5,000. It's a big opportunity.
The competition is very tough. In the beginning, there were 92 firms wanting to bid for the two licenses."
"Then, they narrowed down the number to 11 and Telenor is one of them.
Other 11 finalists included Singapore
Telecom, a Malaysian telecom giant firm, France Telecom, Airtel of
India, KDD of Japan, a George Soros-affiliated firm etc."
"I couldn't say about the investment
outlay yet, but the Myanmar government wanted to do within two years
what our countries did in 15 years. In other words, they want to do
data, 2G, 3G, and 4G services in one go."
"They wanted to have data services from
Day One - not starting with voice and other services first. They wanted
the best technology in the world and implemented the project quickly."
"The successful bidders will have to
cover Myanmar with voice services as quickly as possible but this is a
country where there is no telecom tower or other infrastructure yet,
while only 26 per cent of the population now has electricity so you need
solar panels to provide electricity to the telecom towers."
"Second, they need to start data services and cover the whole country very quickly also, and then application services.
That could be 2G or 3G and there is no
fixed line or broadband services. It will be the first time that Myanmar
people can access the Internet and via their mobile devices."
"That's a big challenge. Then, they will
need services such as Facebook, Google Tweeter, but we also look at
Internet-based banking, farmers, education and other services."
source: Eleven Myanmar
No comments:
Post a Comment