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Myanmar (Burma) - Telecoms, Mobile and Internet
Paul Budde Communication Pty Ltd, Oct 2011, Pages: 27
Despite the elections held in 2010 the shadow of the military regime continues to hang over Myanmar and there is no sign of the much-needed structural reform in the telecom sector.
Myanmar’s telecommunications sector continues to be dominated by the state-owned monopoly telephone service provider, Myanmar Posts and Telecommunications (MPT). With the military government’s conservative approach to structural reform, it was not surprising that MPT continued to maintain its monopoly over the telecom sector, being the sole national telephone network operator.
The MPT drafted a 20-year master plan the period 1990 to 2010 and under this plan a range of different projects were implemented over the years to improve the underdeveloped network. The expansion has been characterised, however, by a somewhat erratic rate of progress. Nevertheless, the country had managed to move from around 100,000 installed fixed lines to more than one million in 2010. Over the same time period the number of fixed-line subscribers increased from 76,000 to just over 600,000. Despite this more than tenfold increase, however, into 2011 the country’s fixed-line penetration was still just a little over 1%.
The dispersion of network infrastructure has been heavily biased towards the cities, with Yangon and Mandalay having estimated telephone penetrations of 6% and 4% respectively. By 2010 most villages in Myanmar were still without a fixed-line telephone service. According to the ITU, the official waiting list for telephone services stood at 100,000 by 2004 and had increased to 250,000 by 2009. (There has been no updated figure published for 2010.) The installation of new telephone services could often take years. This was despite the fact that MPT said it had been expanding the network by approximately 15% each year. To catch up on demand, it was estimated that MPT would need to install more than 500,000 new telephone lines in a short period of time. This would represent a capital investment of around US$600 million – money that was simply not available.
Foreign investment in the telecom sector continued to be low, due to the political situation in Myanmar, the structure of the country’s telecom industry and the general state of the economy, this also being despite the government’s attempts to increase foreign interest. Investment in the sector has been running at less than US$6 million per year.
However, the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) declared via its website that it has been making ‘all-out efforts’ for the development and improvement in the telecom sector. ‘As regards telephone communications, ‘auto-telephones’ were already being installed. Now, one can make telephone contact inside and outside Myanmar quite conveniently’, the website claimed. It also added ‘Since the communication sector plays an important role in all round development, the necessary improvements such as installation of microwave telephone exchanges in many townships and introducing of mobile phones via satellite communication offered people easy access. In other words, it is an easy access even to the remotest areas in Mandalay’. Of course, the website did not offer any statistics on the number of telecom (either fixed line or mobile) subscribers in the country. An unfortunate by-product of the government’s conservative approach has been that official, up-to-date statistics continue to be hard to come by, especially if they do not paint a positive picture of the government’s management of the country.
Market highlights:
Note: Market highlights for the Myanmar market are based on estimated figures and conjecture as the administration continues to either not issue information or issue contradictory information.
- Myanmar’s mobile market has grown by 140% over the last three years.
- Of course, this mobile subscriber growth was from a low base and the reported 550,000 mobile subscribers early in 2011 still only constituted a penetration of just over 1%.
- Fixed-line subscriber numbers have been growing erratically; but growth has been similar in overall strength to the mobile market. Penetration remained low, however, still down at just over 1% by 2011.
- Internet penetration also continues to be disconcertingly low with accurate figures hard to obtain.
- Internet user penetration was around two per 1,000 of population by 2011; at the same time internet subscriptions were particularly tiny in number with penetration below one subscriber per 1,000 of population.
- Although broadband services were also small in number, one positive aspect was the progressive introduction of a variety of platforms, including more recently WiMAX services.
While Myanmar still needs to seriously address regulatory reform, there was no evidence that any real progress had been made on this front.
This report provides an overview of the trends and developments in the telecommunications markets in Myanmar (Burma). Subjects covered include:
- Key statistics;
- Market and industry overviews;
- Major operators (mobile and fixed)
- Regulatory environment;
- Infrastructure;
- Mobile market;
- Internet market.
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