Telenor Myanmar has signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Malaysia telecoms service provider OCK Group and its local partner, King Royal Technologies. The signing ceremony was held at Telenor Asia headquarters in Bangkok.
COK Group plans to invest US$75 million, under a newly-secured five-year deal comprising up to 3,000 towers under a longterm “build and lease” business model in Myanmar for Telenor. OCK also has operations in Indonesia, China, Cambodia and Singapore.
Sam Ooi, Managing Director of OCK Group stated, “Myanmar investment is part of the group’s mission in growing our recurring income. As a progressive company, we always lookout for more opportunities in the regional markets and it has been a fruitful venture. Myanmar’s mobile phone industry has grown tremendously in the past years. It may need more telecommunications towers both to cater for coverage and also for capacity. For OCK, this is a golden opportunity to be able a partner with a prestigious company, Telenor. We are also looking forward working closely as a long-term partner with Telenor.”
In January last year, Telenor got the license and signed an agreement with Myanmar Government for a nationwide telecommunication services and currently operates the largest 3G networks in Myanmar. It currently serves more than 12 million customers and its network covers over 60% of the population.
Joachim Rajaram, Telenor Myanmar’s head of communication shared, “Telenor is hiring new tower companies to expand its supply chain and roll-out progresses from high density urban areas and large townships to smaller towns, villages and rural areas. Under the terms of its license, we must cover 90% of the country within five years. We have built more than 4,000 sites in 13 states and regions in Myanmar and we will need to build about 9,000 sites in order to deliver solid nationwide voice and data coverage.”
