On June 27, the government of Myanmar will grant the first two licenses to foreign mobile companies to operate in the country. Digicel, based in the Caribbean, and Singtel,
out of Singapore, have both pledged to invest billions to bring
wireless coverage to 96% of the country within a few years. (The
government has set a goal of 80% coverage by 2015.) They've already
begun to scout real estate, hire locals, and in Digicel's case, sponsor the national football league.
After five decades of repressive military dictatorship, human rights
violations, systematic violence, and isolation from the rest of the
world, the sudden political and economic thaw in the Southeast Asian
country of Myanmar has opened the floodgates for a frenzy of innovation,
as 60 million people prepare to get online for the first time.
Currently, less than 10 percent of the population is estimated to have
access to a mobile phone (all these numbers are estimates, since there
hasn't been an official census in years). SIM cards, which are rationed
by the government and sold for less than $2 each, can be bought on the
black market for $250-$300 a pop. HTC, Samsung, and Huawei phones are
for sale everywhere on the street.
A country rich in gas, oil, and even gold is coming back to life
after being suspended in time--released, like democratic activist,
national hero, and Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, from a
kind of house arrest. Natives, returning emigrants, and foreigners alike
are crowding cafes, making deals, and starting companies. There's a
brand-new coworking space called Project Hub. The technology unconference called BarCamp has been held in Yangon since 2010; the one held this January was the world's largest, with more than 6,000 participants.
And as of a couple weeks ago, Myanmar even has its own social network, Squar.
Cofounder Rita Nguyen, whose parents emigrated from Vietnam to Canada,
worked in community management and marketing for Electronic Arts. She's
been traveling to the region since 1995, but she visited Myanmar for the
first time in January. "It was really very clear immediately that there
was something special going on," she said.
Although Facebook is already gaining in popularity, Nguyen believes
there's a place for a Burmese-language and mobile-native site that
connects locals to each other and to useful local information--"Survival
stuff," she calls it, like where to buy diapers. She blew through her
initial fundraising target in a couple of weeks, a testament, she says,
to the enormous interest in the marketplace.
Obviously the country has an uphill climb to be truly welcoming to
entrepreneurs, to say nothing of reaching the prosperity of a Vietnam or
a Singapore. Nguyen's development shop is located in Vietnam because of
the dearth of programmers in Myanmar. Both bandwidth and real estate
are outrageously expensive--like "Hong Kong prices in downtown Yangon,"
says Nguyen. There are many lingering political hurdles, and there's
troubling anti-Muslim violence and unrest. Still, there's an
unmistakable giddiness in Nguyen's voice as she talks about the
opportunities here. "Sixty million people falling out of the sky--you're
not going to see that again in our generation."
source: Fast Company
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