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10/30/2017 Myanmar's telco revolution opens new chapter- Nikkei Asian Review
https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Trends/Myanmar-s-telco-revolution-opens-new-chapter?page=2 1/5
Business > Trends
October 28, 2017 6:00 pm JST
Myanmar's telco revolution opens newchapterContent key as country's focus turns to unlocking services
STEVE GILMORE, Contributing writer
Running in tandem with the search for content is an attempt to change the
way people in Myanmar use the internet. Because telco reform came so late
to the country, its internet experience was essentially born on mobile devices.
Three years later, internet use in Myanmar still consists mainly of
smartphone owners -- 80% of all mobile users -- on just two services,
Facebook and YouTube.
A 2016 survey from think tank LIRNEasia found that less than 1% of the
population had internet access through a source other than a mobile phone.
What internet service providers are hoping for is a boom in home broadband.
"Broadband is going to explode," Frontiir's Tun told conference delegates.
"Fixed broadband is coming and it will reach homes at an affordable price."
Providers are split between those like Frontiir offering a wireless service and
those running fiber below or above ground. But despite a host of new ISPs
springing up, home broadband is still only available in select areas of the big
cities and remains unaffordable for most of the inhabitants.
Affordability seems to be on the way, however, prices have already fallen by
50% to 75% in the last year, Nexlab's Min said. Industry executives are
expecting another 50% drop over the next year or so.
One factor behind this fall is the entry of the telcos into the home broadband
market to compete directly with existing ISPs. This is a natural move given
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10/30/2017 Myanmar's telco revolution opens new chapter- Nikkei Asian Review
https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Trends/Myanmar-s-telco-revolution-opens-new-chapter?page=2 2/5
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the saturated state of Myanmar's mobile market. The three operational telcos
have a collective 52 million SIM card subscriptions in a population of 53
million, and competition over data prices prompted the regulator to set a
price floor this year of 1.25 kyat per megabyte (less than one U.S. cent).
Average revenue per user has dropped and
a fourth operator -- Mytel, a tie-up
between Vietnam's Viettel and various
Myanmar entities -- will enter the market
in 2018. By comparison, broadband is a
greenfield.
Telenor is in the middle of a pilot project to provide fiber-to-the-home
broadband in select townships in Yangon that will help it to decide "whether
to go massive on this," Telenor Myanmar Chief Executive Lars Erik Tellman
told Myanmar Connect delegates. Telenor's website boasts that its prices are
"five to 10 times lower" than some of its competitors'.
MPT entered the broadband market in August with its own home fiber
package with prices in line with Telenor's. The firm will expand across
Yangon and Mandalay early next year and plans to roll out the service to
other major cities throughout 2018, Benino said. He expects a "drastic
improvement" in broadband access over the next 12 months.
Lagging behind its two competitors is Ooredoo, which announced on Oct. 21
it is partnering with local ISP Yatanarpon Teleport to offer fiber broadband
in and around Mandalay starting from November. The Qatari company said
it would expand its services to other cities in the country in due course.
MPT's August announcement has already triggered a wave of price
reductions from private competitors playing catch-up, with many either
halving prices or doubling speeds. More competition is on the horizon.
Myanmar's regulator has auctioned off a chunk of spectrum to four dedicated
local broadband providers split across three geographic areas.
Global Technology has spectrum for an area that includes the capital
Naypyitaw and expects to launch its service in April 2018. Amara
Communications has Yangon and Mandalay and intends to launch before the
end of 2017. Their entry "will keep everyone in the fixed broadband business
on our toes," said Frontiir's Tun.
Bandwidth blossoms
Not everyone is betting on a broadband explosion. Internet speeds on mobile
devices have almost doubled this year thanks to a telco-only allocation of
fourth generation spectrum. Portable, cheap and fast, the smartphone
hotspot remains the preferred option for CEOs and students alike.
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10/30/2017 Myanmar's telco revolution opens new chapter- Nikkei Asian Review
https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Trends/Myanmar-s-telco-revolution-opens-new-chapter?page=2 3/5
"There's not much you can do now on broadband you can't do on mobile,"
said Petersen. "I don't see the case right now for ordinary consumers in
Myanmar installing broadband in the home unless you have demands that
are very out of the ordinary."
Either way speeds and services on both options are only going to improve.
Overland and deep-sea cables are putting more and more potential
bandwidth at Myanmar's disposal. Myo Ohn is chief executive of Singapore
company Campana, which provides regional connectivity services. He said
Myanmar's total internet traffic was estimated at 324 gigabits per second and
that demand still outstripped supply, which was supporting wholesale prices
for broadband connectivity.
That 324 gigabits is double what it was last year and Ohn expects it to
continue to double yearly -- hitting 1 terabit per second around 2020 or 2021
-- as new connections become available. Campana, for example, aims to go
live with cross-border services on an overland cable to Thailand in November
and is planning its own deep-sea Myanmar-Singapore cable.
That undersea connection, said Ohn, would "meet Myanmar's bandwidth
demand for the next 15 to 20 years." The deep-sea cable will have a total
capacity of 20 terabits per second -- over 60 times the country's current
needs -- and should be operational in late 2018.
Until this year Campana would have been unable to offer these connections,
because only the three operational telcos held international gateway (IGW)
licenses. This meant any ISP had to go through them for an international
connection. But just as the government broke MPT's monopoly in 2014, it
broke the telco oligopoly on cross-border connections this year by issuing 11
Men film a Chinese New Year dragon dance on their smartphones in downtown Yangon. (Photoby Steve Gilmore)
10/30/2017 Myanmar's telco revolution opens new chapter- Nikkei Asian Review
https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Trends/Myanmar-s-telco-revolution-opens-new-chapter?page=2 4/5
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local companies -- including Campana's Myanmar subsidiary -- with IGW
licenses. Wholesale broadband prices are going to fall, and retail with them.
For Campana, the next step after its cable is in place will be to create
Myanmar's first internet exchange, said Myo. This would be a single facility
at which all content and data companies operating in Myanmar could
connect with each other and, through Campana's deep-sea cable, to the huge
internet exchange in Singapore, he said.
"That's going to help enable a whole new data ecosystem to spring up -- cloud
services, content streaming and content caches -- that brings Myanmar
closer and closer to the modern world," he said.
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