Telecommunication sector is rushing to meet the growing demand from the mobile phone usage by putting up more mobile phone towers to relay the calls through out the country, industry sources said.
"The number of the towers in the country
is still not enough. We will build more [with the money we get] from
selling mobile SIM cards to local mobile users," said Htay Win, the
chief engineer for MPT.
Myanmar has nearly three million
mobile-phone subscribers as of December 2012 with a very low
penetration, according to official figures. The country has remained
largely untapped so far.
Myanmar has fewer mobile towers compared with its neighboring countries, mobile analysts say.
"Its neighboring countries like Vietnam
and Thailand have more than 50,000 mobile towers. Myanmar has only 1500
towers now. The number of towers can be a challenge when the number of
local mobile users increases in the country. It is due to
underdevelopment of information technology and financial situation of
the country," said Mr Ren Geng, the managing director for Huawei
Technologies (Yangon).
Myanmar Post and Telecommunication (MPT)
has currently been working together with companies such as Huawei, ZTE
and ASP to build the towers across the country.
Huawei has built 40 per cent of the
towers which amounts to 1500 across the country. The company said it has
built the towers mostly in Yangon, Mandalay and Nay Pyi Taw.
Huawei, which operates in more than 140
countries, sees itself as a provider of telecoms solutions in the
country's market rather than as an operator, Mr Ren Geng said lately.
Currently the country has 857 Base
Transceiver Stations (BTS) for 1,654,667 local GSM mobile users, 188
BTSs for 225,617 local WCDMA mobile users, 366 BTSs for 633,569 local
CDMA-450 mobile users, 193 BTSs for 341,687 CDMA-800 mobile users,
according to official figures released in mid 2012.
Vodafone Group and China Mobile, the two
biggest wireless companies, will join forces to bid for mobile licences
in Myanmar as investors and operators jostle to be among the first into
the Southeast Asian country, reports say.
Real estate and agriculture firm Yoma
Strategic Holdings has formed a consortium to bid for mobile phone
licenses expected to be awarded by Myanmar's government later this year.
The interested entities come from across
the world (Asia, North and Latin America, Middle East, Europe, Oceania
and Africa) and include some of the largest global telecommunications
companies and foreign investment firms as well as Myanmar companies,
said the Myanmar government.
The state-run MRTV television station
said this week that 350,000 low-cost mobile-phone cards a month would be
sold in the country, starting on April 24.
Myanmar’s economy is projected to grow
6.2% this year, up from an expected 5.5% increase last year, according
to an October World Bank report.
source: Eleven Myanmar
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