On February 12, Myanmar’s fourth telecom operator MyTel celebrated launching ceremony at the Kempinski Hotel in Naypyidaw, the capital city of Myanmar. MyTel received its nationwide telecommunications license (NTL) in last month. MyTel is a joint venture of a local consortium comprising 11 private firms and Vietnamese operator Viettel.
Vietnamese telecom major Viettel, owned by the Vietnamese defense ministry holds 49 per cent stake in the joint venture while the local consortium, comprising 11 companies, own 23 per cent. Myanmar government-owned Start High Public Company holds a 28 per cent stake in the venture. MyTel has opened branches across Myanmar, and currently employs 2,000 staff. The operator will provide 4G services on the local market. The operator has said it will provide only 4G broadband services.
For Viettel, Myanmar is the 10th foreign market including Cambodia,Laos, Haiti, Mozambique, East Timor, Peru, Cameroon, Burundi and Tanzania. It has more than 90 million customers, including those in Vietnam. The group’s revenue was $11.2 billion in 2017.
Myanmar’s mobile revolution began at the end of 2013 when Government invited foreign telecoms for bids for the right to operate mobile networks. Myanmar now has at least 33 million active mobile subscriptions in a country with an official population of 53 million.
In 2017, 1 in 4 people in Myanmar use internet on a regular basis. According to a new report released by ‘We Are Social’, Myanmar counts 17 million Internet users which represent 26% of the country population in 2017.
MyTel aims to extend its 4G LTE network to more than 90% of the country’s population within three years, especially in rural and remote areas because former operators such as Ooredoo and Telenor especially control large market share in urban areas such as Yangon Viettel said MyTel will provide mobile and fixed telecom services, content services and e-wallets in Myanmar in the first quarter.
In local market, Local operator or State owned Myanmar Posts and Telecommunications, which partnered with Japan based KDDI, Norway’s Telenor and Qatar’s Ooredoo share 42%, 35% and 23% of the market respectively.
