Bangladesh will provide 100 Gbps of Internet bandwidth to India. Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) has planned to deploy cross-border optical fiber cable, which will ensure cheaper wholesale Internet bandwidth to the seven northeastern Indian states. The states of Assam, Tripura, Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh, Naga Land, Manipur and Mizoram are popularly known as the “seven sisters”. India has been struggling with broadband deployment in this region being remotely located from the subsea cable lading stations (Click on the map). Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura and Mizoram are adjacent to Bangladesh while the rest are at closer proximity.
One thing I have learned is not to place too much trust in promises of investment. But USD 15 billion from one company seems in the ballpark for a country that wants to go from 5 to 80 fast (that’s mobile SIMs/100). All good. But why is the thinking fixated on operators who will do everything? They want the operators to build and operate telecenters; provide mobile money and aginfo services.
My respect for Huawei goes back to 2002-04 when I was responsible for telecom reforms in government. They never approached me to lobby for anything. But I asked them what the per-line costs they could offer on CDMA. Their response knocked my socks off. One of the two companies that got the first blocks of spectrum for CDMA went for Huawei.
It was tough to engage when reforms were not on the cards and Myanmar seemed happy to watch while the whole world got connected. Those days we wrote about China selling mobile service inside Myanmar and about cables that were cut. We also wrote about Cyclone Nargis and our small contributions to relief. But all that changed once the reform winds started blowing. I’ve been asked why so many blog posts on Myanmar.
It is reported that the law went through yesterday. No copy is yet available. Given need to translate, may take a few days.
Internet in Myanmar has suffered outage on July 20, 2013. Since then the country remains choked in terms of connectivity. Officially the breakdown of only submarine cable (SEA-ME-WE3) at 13 kilometers away from the coast was blamed. The Irrawaddy wrote on July 24: “Works are being carried out to repair the fault as quick as possible in coordination with [a] Singapore-based underwater repair and maintenance team. It is expected to take about one month,” the state-owned company said in a brief announcement in government newspaper The New Light of Myanmar.
A dark cloud has appeared on the horizon of the Myanmar telecom sector in the form of a license granted to a military affiliated company. There is precedent in countries such as Iran. As long as the regulator can regulate, ownership need not be an issue. Usually the problem is the difficulty a regulator has in effectively exerting authority over the incumbent. The Myanmar incumbent is in such bad shape and the network in so undeveloped that this may not be such a huge concern.
Now that the licensing is done, it’s time for post mortems on the failed bids. Here is one on Viettel’s failed bid: In 2012, Telenor reported the total turnover of $16.5 billion and the net profit of $1.4 billion. The group has committed to develop the mobile network in the market the next year with the nationwide coverage within five years.
The 90 day period for finalizing the licenses is still not over, but information has been released on the planned pricing structures (this is unusual, since normal practice is to keep it secret until the day the products are launched). But then we should not expect normal from Myanmar. Norway-based Telenor said it will charge 25 kyat ($0.03) per minute for calls, while Qatar’s Ooredoo will put the price at 35 kyat ($0.04) per minute for on-net calls and 45 kyat ($0.
Now that the two mobile licenses have been issued, all eyes are on the new Telecom Law, expected to be enacted any time. The version I looked at, supposedly worked with assistance from the ITU Bangkok Office, was so bad that it was withdrawn. It appears the subsequent version is not too good: The Sections 15 and 16 of the proposed bill says the license holders must abide by the rules, regulations, orders and directives issued by the Ministry of Information and its related departments. And the Section 32 stipulates that license holders must provide services in conformity with the price rates approved by the department. According to Section 38 said the license holders are not allowed to share market, buy telecommunication appliances from unapproved suppliers or go against a certain opponent in an improper way.
Xenophobes are not very bright. What Myanmar needs to achieve its target of connecting its people very quickly is massive investment. Myanmar Buddhist capital could not connect even five percent of the population in all these years. Now the government has decided to allow foreign capital to do the job. What color is money?
I am uncertain about the credibility of this source, but this Myanmar online news source states that the shortlisted 12 have shrunk to four groups. The shortlisted companies have formed into four final groups that include Digicel; the KDDI Corporation together with Sumitomo, Myanmar Information and Communication Technology Development Corp. (MICTDC) and A1 Construction; the MTN Consortium, and finally; Singtel, Kanbawza (KBZ) and Myanmar Telephone Co. Where is Axiata? Telenor?
Vodafone and China Mobile were an odd couple. Now the story has become curiouser. Lack of regulatory certainty has caused them to withdraw from Myanmar. Vodafone said it had withdrawn after seeing the final licence conditions, which were published on 20 May, because “the opportunity does not meet the strict internal investment criteria to which both Vodafone and China Mobile adhere”. A spokeswoman for Vodafone added that among the British company’s concerns were that a promised telecommunications bill overhauling regulation of the sector is now not due to be enacted before Burma finalises its choice of foreign mobile operator on 27 June.
Cyclone Nargis still haunts Myanmar. With a wall of wave as high as 16 feet at 135 miles per hour, the sea had unleashed its fury across the Irrawaddy Delta on May 2, 2008. Nearly 140,000 lives were perished and 2.4 million displaced people lost everything. It destroyed 450,000 homes, damaged 350,000 others, flooded 600,000 hectares of agricultural land and ruined 60% of farming implements.
With long experience in neighboring Bangladesh, where they may have well discovered the Budget Telecom Network model, Telenor appears to be pulling out all the stops in its Myanmar campaign. Telenor plans to sell SIM cards for free—or with a minimal charge of about 20 kyat (US$0.02)—and offer its phone service by a pay-per-minute plan. The company also plans to make communications accessible by establishing a high volume of points of sales throughout the country. “We never want a customer to be living more than a few hundred meters from a retailer,” Brekke said.
Today was the day Myanmar lowered the price of SIMs. Here are the conditions imposed. 350,000 SIM cards will be divided among states and divisions on a monthly basis. In order to prevent the common practice of transferring SIM card ownership, the cards will be disabled if they are not used in the first 15 days after purchase. Certain rules apply to the new SIM cards, which come with 300 kyats (about US$0.