2

A bridge to
life-enriching
services
Ooredoo CEO Rene Meza
talks about putting
phones in hands all
across the country
Ooredoo CEO Rene Meza. Photo: Zarni Phyo

How does Ooredoo set itself apart from

Telenor and MPT?
Our network is the first purely 3G network
to be deployed, not only in Myanmar but
in the world.We are ready to deliver 4G at
the right time. This means that all of our
customers enjoy affordable fast internet
and crystal-clear voice services anywhere
that we have coverage. Our strategy to bring
the best value to the people of Myanmar
and our emphasis is on delivering digital
services which enrich our customers lives,
such as May May, our maternal healthcare
app, which connects women with an online
community of medical professionals for
pre- and ante-natal healthcare advisory
services and, where applicable, treatment.
Very few other operators globally have
created such a portfolio of activities and
initiatives. Our efforts to bridge Myanmars
gender gap in technology and promote the
female digital economy through a variety of
initiatives, including the Connected Women
conference in October last year and Ideaboxs Geek Girls community, which spurs
female development in Myanmars tech
revolution. We offer the most affordable 3G
handset for only K15,000. Looking beyond
Myanmars towns and cities, this is also
about educating people, particularly low income and/or rural communities, about the
benefits of technology, of being connected
and of digital inclusion.
Youve said that 95 percent of your
customers are data users and 85pc own
smartphones. Does this mean that most
Myanmar people become Ooredoo customers in order to use internet services?
Yes, our services really do touch on every
part of modern life, and make a real, positive impact connecting job-seekers with
new opportunities and linking up families
who are separated by geography or time.
Mobile communication enables teachers to
access learning resources, helping make
international standard education more accessible to the people, and enables farmers
to track market demand, and entrepreneurs
to connect with new suppliers, which helps
to modernise Myanmars farming industry.
Is it correct that Ooredoo has grown from
625 to 2700 towers in two years?

We currently have over 3000 sites, and

are expecting to have over 3400 towers by
end of 2015, covering around 75pc of the
countrys population.
Does Ooredoo acquire most of the tower
sites or do other companies acquire the
sites for you?
We have a site acquisition team under our
technology function that works very closely
with the tower companies responsible to
building our sites. Most of the sites are
acquired by tower companies. Towers do
not belong to us. All towers belong to the
tower companies. Operators rent spaces on
towers, in this way we drive infrastructuresharing as an industry.
Myanmar has been able to largely bypass
the old days of the personal computer
and dial-up internet via land lines and
leap straight to smartphone technology.How is this technical change going
to influence peoples lives?What does it
mean for Ooredoos business?
By leapfrogging the countrys population
straight into smartphones, by stimulating
the market through affordable services, we
have been able to transform peoples lives
and the entire society. The aspirations of
Myanmars young population in Myanmar
clearly include an eagerness to adopt mobile technology to develop new businesses
and kick-start social development. That
has been an opportunity we have leveraged
on.We make our services as accessible and
affordable as possible using world-class
technology to empower people to achieve
their goals and aspirations. It is about inclusive development.
You mentioned that at Ooredoo, you are a
delivery entity: that you focus on being
an infrastructure services provider. Does
that mean you are massively spending
on tower site acquisition and laying fiber?
Can you give us an idea of the scale of
Ooredoos expansion?
Ooredoo is a telecommunications services
provider it means we set up the infrastructure that enables communication for
both voice and data services. We partner
with various telecom equipment vendors and telecom passive infrastructure

companies to provide the communication

services. Ooredoo has deployed over than
3000 towers and over 7000 kilometres [4350
miles] of fiber. We plan to cover over 80pc
of the population by the end of next year
with voice and high-speed data services.
We are setting up needed towers and about
15,000km of fiber by the end of next year.
This technology that enables a farmer to
access the internet inexpensively what
do you see happening as a result of this?
We are working together with GSMA [the
GSM Association, a worldwide network
of mobile operators standardising and
promoting the GSM standard since 1995]
to create a mobile application and agricultural value-added services. Agri-VAS, one of
the three main types of mobile agriculture
[mAgri] solutions, is well suited to mitigate
the information gap faced by rural farmers
in developing countries as well as create
efficient platforms for them to engage with
key players in the agriculture ecosystem,
such as farmers in other communities,
businesses buying the agricultural produce
and input suppliers. There is a significant
growth opportunity in Agri-VAS. We estimate that agricultural workers with mobile
connectivity will account for 47% of the
total labour force in Southeast Asia.
Talk us through the problems of nationwide roll-out in Myanmar.
First-time mobile communications have
been rolled out on such a scale in Myanmar
that challenges were to be expected its
complicated, rather than being a problem.In the first couple of weeks of building
we exhausted all of the steel in the country
so more steel had to be brought in. And
there are also more specific components
of which we needed large quantities that
werent readily available in the country,
such as connectors. We had to work hard
to ensure these components were made
available.Myanmars existing infrastructure has required some innovative solutions. Seventy percent of the population
does not have access to electric power, so a
large percentage of our towers need generators.There are brown-outs even in the cities
and often there isnt any power at all in
many of the rural areas, so you need a mix

of green power and diesel.You then need

a small army of people to maintain the
generators. The sheer size of the country is
another consideration its twice the size
of the Philippines, 2000km long by 900km
wide.The road infrastructure is quite poor
and off-road tracks during the rainy season
become very waterlogged and the rain itself
slows down the building progress.However,
the great Myanmar people are used to these
realities and difficulties, and have been
and continue to be our biggest asset in
helping us navigate through these challenges. Sustainable investment is very crucial in
the telecommunications sector. We need to
deploy a lot of international fiber gateways
as well. Therefore, all the operators and
government bodies and the regulator work
in harmony.
Is Ooredoo a telecom or an internet service provider [ISP] or both?Or are the lines
blurring more every day?
We believe every person has the right to
access the benefits of mobile technology
and the internet. We saw a great opportunity to break down the barriers that were
preventing people from accessing these
services, and getting online. We have a
once-in- a-lifetime opportunity to work
with the government as they seek to leapfrog the country technologically, socially
and economically. The people and the
enthusiasm of our employees for the business we are creating is really remarkable.
We have 1000 Ooredoo Myanmar family
members and we will continue to grow
this number through training and development as well as transfer of knowledge and
expertise within the business. Two year
ago around 10pc of the countrys population were estimated to have mobile phone
access.Ooredoo has committed to making
this 97pc in five years time. We are more
than just a telecoms operator.Through creative and innovative solutions, developed in
partnership with local people, government
and businesses, we offer underserved communities the opportunity to access vital
information and services, such as banking,
healthcare and education, via their mobile
phone.Ooredoo is proud to be part of
Myanmars bridge to life-enriching services.

3
Reaching 5 million Customers

Accelerating Investment in Myanmar

Accelerating Investment in Myanmar

1,306
1,200
1,306
1,200
Q3'14

Q4'14

1,373
1,373
Q1'15

1,430
1,518
1,430

Q2'15

Q3'15

Ooredoo Customer Base (million's)

Over
US $ Over
1.5 billion

3.4

Invested
so far
US $ 1.5 billion

2.4

Invested so far

Q4'14

Q1'15

Q2'15

3.4

1.1
Q3'14

Q3'14

Minutes of Usage (mn)

Minutes of Usage (mn)
Minutes of Usage (mn)

Ooredoo Customer Base (million's)

Cummulative Investments - Million USD

Cummulative Investments - Million USD
1,518

E xplos ive growth in Voice and Data us age

E xplos ive growth in Voice and Data us age
E xplos ive growth in Voice and Data us age

Reaching 5 million Customers

2.4

4.8

4.0
4.8
4.0

Q4'14

Q1'15

Q2'15

Q3'15

Q4'14

Q1'15

Q2'15

Q3'15

~5x Customer

1,989

1,698
1,698

Base Growth
~5x Customer
Base Growth

952
193

952

Q3'14

Exco Business Update by Marketing

September 2015

September 2015

September 2015

360

Exco Business Update by Marketing

September 2015

28.6%
Area

4.7%
Towers

624
August 2014

Population
Population

71.5%
~73%

Area
Area

Area
Area

23.7%
23%
Towers
Towers

2,760
2464
November 2015

2,820

4,138

1,599
Q4'14

2,820
Q1'15

Q3'14

Q2'15

Q3'15

Q3'14

Q4'14

Q1'15

Q2'15

Q3'15

Q3'14

1,599
Q4'14

Q1'15

Q2'15

Q3'15

Q3'14

Q4'14

Q1'15

Q2'15

Q3'15

Q3'14

Q4'14

Q1'15

Q2'15

Q3'15

360
360

+12x growth in
+12xVoice
growth in
+12xVoice
growth in

2,246 million minutes

Voice

2,246 million minutes

2,246 million minutes

Population
Population

71.5%
70%

1,599

6,444

Q3'15

Taung Gyi Launch

Population

4,138

Q2'15

2,820

Q1'15

193

6,444
4,138

2,246

952
Q4'14

193

In One year
have
InWe
One
year
have
InWe
One
year
Exco Business Update by Marketing

6,444

2,246

Q3'14

We have

Exco Business Update by Marketing

1,989

2,246

1,698

1.1

Q3'15

1,989

Data Volume (TB)

Data Volume (TB)
Data Volume (TB)

23.7%
~25%
Towers
Towers

3,400
2464

Over

December 2015

Dawei Launch

Loikae Launch

Pathein Launch

18x growth in
Datagrowth
volume
18x
in
Datagrowth
volume
18x
in
6,444 TBs

Data volume
6,444 TBs
6,444 TBs

Exco Business Update by Marketing

September 2015

Exco Business Update by Marketing

September 2015

Exco Business Update by Marketing

September 2015

From monopoly to open market:

MPT dials in to tech future

By SA Becker

The CEO of the joint operation with MPT,

Myanmars largest telecom operator, statebacked MPT, says fixed mobile convergence
(FMC) will be a big part of MPTs future.
FMC describes the transition point in the
telecommunications industry that removes
the distinctions between fixed and mobile
networks by creating a seamless experience
using a combination of fixed broadband and
local access wireless technologies.
Holding a degree in computer engineering
from Gakushuin University in Tokyo,
managing director Takashi Nagashima,
a longtime professional in the telecom
industry, sat down last week to answer
questions about how the original government
telecommunications operator is transforming
in a commercial direction to stay ahead in a
new, highly competitive market.
MPT was the original government
department for telecoms, but now has to
compete with foreign companies Ooredoo
and Telenor.How many customers do you
have now?Was it wise for the government
to open the sector as it did?
We have 16 million active subscribers. I
absolutely agree that it was a wise decision
for the government to open the sector to
competition. The charge for a voice call
before the liberalisation was around K50 per
minute. Now all the operators are providing
the same service at less than half the cost.
How does MPT differentiate from Ooredoo
and Telenor in its approach?What
advantages do you offer customers?
MPT is the leading telecommunications
operator in Myanmar. MPT is also the original
Myanmar operator. This is a huge advantage
over our competitors because MPT has deep
knowledge about the Myanmar market itself.
With this knowledge, MPT has made a joint
operation with the Japanese companies KDDI
and Sumitomo. This combination of local
knowledge and Japanese technology will
profit Myanmar very much. MPT has been in
business for more than 100 years.
What is the relationship between MPT and
Japan? How did this Japanese presence
unfold over time?
Originally KDDI and Sumitomo were aiming
to enter into this market as competitor to
MPT, but we lost the tender opportunity. If
MPT would have had to compete with new
entrants by itself, it would have been very
difficult to compete because it is part of
government that was providing services to
Myanmar people. The government thought
someone who knows the business should
be there to support MPT. Thats why we are
here. KDDI is a telecommunications operator
in Japan, and together with Sumitomo
Corporation who is a Japanese trading firm
they are jointly doing mobile business
in Mongolia through Mobicom, the largest
telecom operator in that country. In fact,
some of the Mobicom people have come to
work here to support at MPT. Myself, I have
worked for KDDI for more than 30 years,
heading all global business for the company
which has 27,000 employees worldwide.
How many towers does MPT have? Does
MPT often share towers with the other two
telecoms?

ready for network enhancement for the

next generation network such as LTE being
available in the near future, in order to meet
demand for this clear trend.

CEO of the joint operation with MPT Takashi Nagashima at MPT headquarters on Bo Aung Kyaw
Street. Photo: Aung Khant

Right now we have more than 3000 towers

and the number is increasing very rapidly.
By the end of March 2016 we will increase
to about 5000 towers. Not all towers are
leased from one of the tower companies.
Many of the towers we construct for
ourselves. Our original plan was to construct
towers by ourselves, but because we had
to increase our speed, we decided to lease
towers from tower companies as well, in
addition to constructing our own. We are
now negotiating with other operators with
regard to tower sharing. In the beginning
other operators were requesting sharing, but
MPTs towers at the time were not designed
to share use. Almost all existing MPT towers
are not sharable. However, right now we are
negotiating the sharing of towers with other
operators. The number of requirements from
the other operators is decreasing because
they are using many types of towers. The
original requirement, however, was that they
lease from tower companies from many
areas. Nevertheless, we are certainly willing
to share.
There are many taxis and busses around
town painted in MPT colours. Can you
explain your marketing strategy?
Our communications platform or slogan
is Moving Myanmar Forward. We created
our corporate logo in September 2014.
Since then we have been trying to improve
customer satisfaction, services, technical
and operations so that MPT is known as
a company that is helping Myanmar to
develop. The change is a key message
to deliver and we want all Myanmar
customers to feel that MPT is changing and
becoming much closer to them. We have
various promotions for voice and data. Our
television commercials have been very
well received, especially by the younger
generations. In our marketing campaigns we
always launch initiatives in with our motto:
operations that can help Myanmar and its
people to move forward. For instance, we
have sponsored Myanmar boxing, Myanmar
Idol and Telethon and Cyber SEA Games,
and all of these sponsorships initiatives
are based on local Myanmar traditions.
As for mass advertising, MPT pays careful
attention to the scenery where we put
advertising materials in the cities. We are
very focused on where we allow our ads to
be placed, taking care not to destroy local

surroundings. We feel that we can adhere

to Moving Myanmar Forward without
destruction to the environment and this is
very important to us.
Myanmar is leapfrogging directly to
smartphones:PC sales are declining and
people are bypassing the evolution that took
place in other countries.How do you hope
to harness this revolution and stay ahead of
the competition?
As to the leapfrogging, you are correct;
Myanmar is doing this not only in
telecommunications but also in
transportation. A huge amount of cars have
flowed into Myanmar and the infrastructure
to support them has not been sufficiently
improved. The most important thing in
order to compete in the telecommunications
sector is to understand the nature of the
market and to know the customers and local
needs. In this sense, as the only original
Myanmar operator, we have the advantage
of our strategic alignment with Japanese
partners. In this way, MPT can offer updated
technology and at the same time bring our
in-depth ethos of the Myanmar market
which makes us stay ahead of the other
operators.
Is digital use increasing as rapidly as voice
calls?What does this trend enable you to
predict about the future and how does that
shape your strategy?
It is true that data traffic is steeply
increasing, and has doubled in the last few
months. According to progress in technology,
digital use may swiftly overtake voice in the
future. We are not providing LTE [long-term
evolution, a standard for high-speed wireless
data transfer] services yet, but in the near
future we may need to start providing this
service. The basic strategy right now is we
will maintain our improvement works and
expansion in both mobile and fixed networks
in order to meet technical trends and
customer needs.
Ive heard video use on smartphones is
growing rapidly also.What other technical
changes do you see coming?
There is strong demand for video apps over
smartphones, like YouTube and Facebook.
Like in other countries, we need to be

Looking to the future, are you

confident?Why?
We are confident about the future because
first of all we are the only operator who
can deliver a wide range of business
communication services, from leased-line
intra-net to fiber internet especially for B2B
[business-to-business] customers. Following
Myanmars economic growth, we have strong
demand for IP-VPN [virtual private networks,
linking offices in different areas in a closed
network] which we are the first to offer in
Myanmar nationwide, and for the optical
fiber internet service, which is now delivered
through our high-speed gateway. Starting
from three major cities, we are planning
to expand it soon. On top of that, fixed
mobile convergence [FMC] will be offered to
business customers, like Mobile SIM cards +
Fiber Internet, with bundled pricing, so the
services offered will be widened. As the only
[local] Myanmar operator, we are confident
we have all the advantages with our
strategic alignment of Japanese partners to
differentiate ourselves from our competitors.
A fourth mobile operator will materialise
in the coming months a group of local
companies, which will probably team up
with a large foreign operator.Will the
appearance of this fourth operator change
the MPT strategy at all?
As an incumbent operator, we would like
to continue to make every effort to deliver
the best services to Myanmar people. This is
always our strategy and will always be our
priority regardless of how many operators
enter into market. We have more than 8000
employees and MPT is now undergoing a
transformation. MPT employees are still
public servants, so their salaries are paid
by the government. The way of business
is totally different from a private operator
but almost all MPT employees are trying to
align with our new way of business. MPT
was always providing services to the public,
but in a competitive market we have to
pursue customer satisfaction. Customer
care and service may not have been big
priorities in the past, but they are now. We
are introducing Japanese standards of service
to this market including customer care. That
is a totally different thing.
How many Japanese staff does MPT have?
We have about 100 Japanese staff, more than
half of whom are technical.
How do you like working in Myanmar?
This is a very exciting market as a
businessperson. Almost all Myanmar
people are very honest and friendly. I was
assigned as a CEO but I personally think it
was a wonderful opportunity for me to be of
service this country because Myanmar has
huge potential to be developed from now on,
and it is my pleasure to serve this country
as a telecom infrastructure operator. This
infrastructure is essential for Myanmars
development. Right now we are expanding,
improving all the telecommunications
networks, fixed lines, and in the near future
this infrastructure will be a big help for the
development of this country. I am very proud
to be a part of it.

Telenor growing by 1 million

customers a month
Stored value e-money approval, expected soon, likely to boost data demand
By SA Becker

WITH 12 million customers, more than 3300

towers and a growth rate at nearly 1 million
new users each month for his company,
Telenors CEO Petter Furberg says the
governments decision to open Myanmars
telecoms market to foreign players was the
right thing to do and also that it was done
right.
We and the rest of the international
community recognise that the process
the government decided to do was very
professionally run and very transparent,
Mr Furberg told The Myanmar Times in an
interview on October 29.
There were 91 companies interested,
11 shortlisted and two selected. It was a
tight-run, transparent and professional
process that put a lot of requirements and
very tough obligations on us. We have rollout requirements and we have to cover 90
percent of the country in five years. There
is also a maximum we can charge for our
services. All these things are part of our
obligations, he said.
In addition to the agreed requirements, Mr
Furberg said he is working with the Central
Bank of Myanmar to seek approval for a
service called stored-value transfers. Its a
form of payment which would make it easy
for people to transfer money to and from
the cities and the countryside, something he
expects will lead to a boom in Myanmars
nascent e-commerce sector.
Through this mobile payment solution,
you can top up at any mum-and-pop shop
and use the cash to buy things online, he
said. The Central Bank is about to complete
the regulations to allow us to do it.
Mr Furberg said the transfer of stored
value would not be targeted at those with
bank accounts, but rather will benefit those
in Myanmar who are currently unserved
by formal financial institutions at last
count, possibly as much as 95 percent of the
population.
We are serving are the people who are
unbanked, and because of that they cant
send money. Right now they have to send
money with a bus driver, for example. For
Telenor and the other operators, we are
already in the industry of converting cash to
electronic and this will allow people to use
electronic cash online.
Mr Furberg said the stored value payments
were not competitive with banks and or
credit cards such as Visa, but rather a
supplement to them providing services they
cannot.
If you are a farmer in a village, how do you
go online to buy something? We hope the
Central Banks regulations will come out very
soon and we are in the final stages of testing,
he said.
Mr Furberg sees enormous potential in
e-commerce.
Myanmar can be part of international
online payments. Telenor has an obligation
and we are in the process of developing
mobile financial services.By allowing that
with our prepaid top-up system we can
allow people to convert cash to electronic
payments.
As of early November, Telenor boasts
nearly 12 million active customers.Just nine

Telenor CEO Petter Furberg at Telenor headquarters. Photo: Aung Khant

months earlier, it had 3.8 million customers;

six months, 6.4 million; three months, 9.5
million. The growth rate works out to roughly
1 million new customers every month an
average of over 33,000 every day.
Customers have been positive to us, Mr
Furberg said, but added, We need another
6000 towers to be where we expect to be,
and we need two to three more years to
accomplish it.
As far as towers go, Mr Furberg is pleased
with the way things are unfolding.
Myanmar has the advantage that we
[telecoms] started the mobile rollout later
than other countries and we learned from
previous mistakes.In most countries, they
focused on building their own towers, and
then sold them off to a tower company,
and then leased them back to the mobile
operators.
Here, Telenor and the other operators
started leasing from day one, placing orders
with tower companies and often sharing the
towers with other operators.
It is up to the tower company to ask if
the telco operator would like to lease space
on this tower as well. Over time I think most
operators will be on most towers, but it takes
a bit of time. The tower companies provide
physical towers and electric power, and this
brings down the total cost, in concrete and
steel and energy consumption, of rolling
out mobile services in Myanmar. If you have
one tower instead of three, the cost is lower
for all parties and there are benefits to the
environment and a significant reduction in
power requirements.
While it may seem odd for competing
companies to pool resources, Mr Furberg says
tower sharing is in everyones interest, as the
struggle is not to cover the nation first but to
provide prices and packages users will prefer.
There is limited competitiveness in
having coverage. We are services companies
and we are competing on other things than
coverage, he said.
Regarding the arrival of a fourth telco in
this competitive landscape, Mr Furberg is
unfazed. It has always been a part of the
governments plan to introduce a fourth
player, so it is something we have anticipated
coming.

We are the biggest 3G operator in

Myanmar today. Of course the others will
catch up. You need to connect with people
and give value for money and thats what we
are trying to do.
Telenor has 220 suppliers, 75 percent
of whom are local companies. Fifty-five
thousand small shops sell Telenors top-up
cards, serviced by 114 distributors.
We are part of something that is positive
for society. We have been very transparent
and we feel we have a responsibility to do
things right and lift the standards in health
and safety, training, follow-up, inspections,
corrective actions. If we find something
wrong, we act immediately and in a number
of areas we are really helping to lift Myanmar.
Mr Furberg admits that coping with
shortages of qualified staff is challenging,
given that there was no mobile industry
to speak of in Myanmar prior to the sector
being opened to the international telcos.
As a result, Telenor must recruit talented
but inexperienced people, then train from
scratch.
MPT was a part of the government and
there wasnt much for us to draw from [in
MPTs workforce]. I feel the ability weve had
to bring in international experts to train local
staff has been a huge advantage.Eighteen
nationalities worked here at Telenor at the
peak.Many [Myanmar people living abroad]
also return and want to be part of the project,
and they see it as a good company to work
in.We are able to recruit many local people
and in most cases the attitude or willingness
to learn more than compensates for any lack
of professional qualifications.
Regarding Telenors approach to cornering
the marketplace, Mr Furberg says the
companys positioning has always been to
serve those who have not been connected
before.
We are here to serve what we call the
mass market for the people that were
not connected when we got here. Two to
three years ago, less than 10 percent of
people had a telephone. Through rapid
expansion of coverage, affordable prices,
and communication thats simple and easy
to understand we have achieved growth
of about a million new customers per

month, he said.
We are going for the middle-to-low end
of the market segment: people who want
quality and service, simple communication,
no tricks, good-quality basic services, internet
access and voice.
The balance between these last two, data
and voice, is changing, he added, and Telenor
is increasingly looking at how to fill an unmet
need for internet access.
Fifty-seven percent of our total customer
base is using data on a monthly basis. That
is closing in on whats happening in Malaysia
and Thailand. There is a clear leapfrogging
taking place in Myanmar in terms of internet
access, he said.
More than 60 percent of Telenors
customers have 3G or 4G phones.
He said most smartphones are 3G, but the
4G models at the high end of the spectrum
are the fastest-growing in sales.
Mobile internet has enormous potential
for lifting education in Myanmar, and people
need more training, he said.
Mr Furberg recognises that working in
telecommunications in a developing country
is about more than just building a customer
base: It also enables those customers to
transform their lives.
The literacy rate is quite high in Myanmar,
especially in the Burmese language. If you
can produce content in the local language,
it will be enhanced even more.To produce
local-language quality content is going to be
part of lifting this country, he said.
One of Mr Furbergs own commitments at
Telenor has been to recognise the importance
of Wikipedia and to offer all customers
free access to what is possibly the most
comprehensive online encyclopedia in the
world.
We are training our own staff to start
writing for Wikipedia so they can actually be
part of spreading quality information on the
internet.
Mr Furberg, a Norwegian national and
former employee of Norways government,
sees a ScandinAsian approach as the way
forward.
The ScandinAsian approach involves
lower business hierarchies, openness,
transparency and weight on the core values
coupled with the fighting spirit of Asia.
Telenor, which is active in Pakistan, India,
Bangladesh, Malaysia and Thailand, has
been in Asia for 20 years. Mr Furberg said the
primary reason for Norways Asian success
was the NMT standard developed by Nordic
operators, which came about before GSM.
More than 50 percent of Telenors revenue
and 80 percent of the customers (a total of
200 million) are based in Asia.
Telenor is more than 50 percent owned by
Norways government, but Mr Furberg says
they are a passive shareholder.
Telenor is a listed company, governed by
normal corporate governance principles, and
is independent from the shareholders, he
said.
Its a privilege, he says, to work in, and for,
Myanmar.
Everyone we have had working
foreigners, expats and returning Myanmar
people I think we all feel that we are part of
something very important.It is a service that
is wanted and needed.We are building an
ecosystem.

Myanmar is like a
white canvas
We can paint anything we want,
says young repat developer

Khine Lin, second from left an his team with their winners prizes. Photo: Thiri Lu

By SA Becker
WHEN Ko Khine Lin found out
that The Myanmar Times was looking
to develop a mobile app to track
newspaper deliveries, he told his
three-person team it might be a
good opportunity. A week later, he
and his team walked away from the
competition as winners, with three
brand new iPhone 6s and three
iPads to show for their efforts.
We faced a big challenge and we
worked an entire week. When we
won we were very excited and what
I realized was that in Myanmar a lot
of companies still are in a paper and
Excel stage. Thats what inspired me
to change the industry into a more
high-tech base.
The biggest challenge was
to make seamless database
architecture to mimic the
requirements given by The Myanmar
Times for its delivery system.
One of the most important things
we focused on was the solid system
architecture, Ko Khine Lin said.

organised by Idea Box (Ooredoo).

At that time, I got inspired by all
these young start-up entrepreneurs.
So, I decided to stay here for good
to get involved in the early stage of
Myanmar tech industry.
For the next two years, Ko Khine
Lin served as a lead architect for the
MyLann.com, an online restaurant
directory which is still going strong
with 240,000 Facebook likes and
300,000+ page views a month. Hes
now busy leading a small software
house called NetKet.co, located in
downtown Yangon.
We are working on cloud-based
and mobile-based solutions for
existing local companies.
For me, the current mobile
market in Myanmar is accelerating
at great speed and there is a very
good potential for entrepreneurs like
us. Myanmar today is like a white
canvas we can paint anything we
want. he said.
He called for education programs
for mobile users in Myanmar:
Mobile users in Myanmar really

In Myanmar a lot of companies

still are in a paper and Excel stage.
Thats what inspired me.
Ko Khine Lin
Developer
Originally from Yangon, Ko Khine
Lin was born in 1989 and went to
high school at BEHS 5, graduating
in 2005. That same year he travelled
to Easton, Pennsylvania, to enroll at
Lafayette College. By 2011 he had
a dual degree in computer science
and mathematics.
Easton was just a small town,
but my college was very vibrant and
I got access to great teachers and
informative courses that allowed
me to proceed in my software
development career.
Returning to Myanmar in 2014
as just one of many repats
repatriates, who have left seeking
skills then returned as the political
climate improved at home Ko
Khine Lin got involved in the
first-ever hackathon in Myanmar,

need to be educated.
Another challenge is how to
fund development enterprises and
monetise those ventures using the
online platform is still very hard.
This problem actually puts IT startups in a situation where they dont
move as fast as they often need to,
he said.
In my opinion, it is all about
time and patience. You just need to
be patient for some mobile money
solutions to become popularly
used by people. Then we can start
connecting the dots in the IT
industry.
Im very optimistic about
Myanmars IT industry and mobile
industry. Thats why I came back for
good from the USA, to be part of the
movement.

Small biz app to aid Myanmar-language accounting

This week is Global Entrepreneur Week, and one local school is celebrating by
readying its small business app for release
By SA Becker

FOR Adam Hunt, director of

operations at entrepreneur training
school Opportunities Now, a major
problem for would-be start-ups
is not being able to track how
they actually use their money
expenses, inflows and outflows,
how much cash they spend, how
much they are saving.
Nobody knows these kinds of
things so it is virtually impossible
to analyse the success of small
business in Myanmar because there
is no way to collect that data, Mr
Hunt said.
He said paper-based accounting
is lacking, and that a simple and
intuitive platform on a mobile
phone, one which allows easy data
entry and processing, is the way
forward.
The Myanmar languge app is
now being alpha-tested with a
small group of the schools trained
entrepreneurs. In 2016, they
plan to release it to microfinance
institutions, small business
associations, NGOs, womens
entrepreneurship organisations and
development organisations.
This app is designed with
Burmese small business
entrepreneurs in mind, Mr Hunt
said.
Features include a way to enter
a start-up budget and an on-going
budget that does comparative
reporting based on the actual
expenses.
This app gives both the
entrepreneur and the supporting
organization a snapshot of the
financial health of the business in
real time, Mr Hunt said.
The app also has a messaging
platform for communication with
Opportunities NOW for assistance
and mentoring.
The most unique things are
the pre-defined criteria and the
analysing of their inputs on a
regular basis, Mr Hunt said.
This generates red flags that
warn of upcoming financial
shortages and other potential

issues.
Ive talked to a lot of industry
experts and no ones ever heard of
this package before.
This week, November 16 to 22,
is Global Entrepreneurship Week
and there are more than 40 events
taking place around the country in
10 cities.
The Opportunities NOW team
will host two business plan
competitions and a gathering of
microfinance institutions.
We are going to invite all the
MFIs to a discussion on valueadded services and demonstrate
this app, he said.
It all started back in September
2014 when David Madden of tech
fostering group Phandeeyar visited
Opportunities Now co-founders
Ryan Russell and Matt Wallace.
They were getting ready to do
a hackathon and businesses were
going to be presenting business
cases to be solved by the hackers.
David suggested they submit a
business case to the hackathon
for local companies to have the
hackers develop software solutions
for business problems. The team
accepted and the business case
the challenge was to help
Opportunities Nows several dozen
small business owners do their
accounting more easily.
We wanted to use a mobile app
so they could enter their financial
records into their phones.
As a result of that hackathon,
Opportunities Now was able to
connect to Thet Naing Soe from the
New Westminster Institute who
developed the app thats in the
alpha-testing stage now.
We are going to release it to our
entrepreneurs in December, Mr
Hunt said. He himself wrote the
detailed RFP for the app, describing
what the app needed to do; Johnny
Knox created the visual design; and
New Westminster built it.
Located in Hlaing Township
and consisting of six foreign staff
and 11 local staff, Opportunities
Now has offices in Yangon, Bago
and Thandwe, with more than
150 students trained and over 70

Operations Director for Opportunities NOW Adam Hunt shows the interface for the new Myanmar language app for small
business entrepreneurs. Photo: Thiri Lu

businesses launched.
Mr Hunt says a majority of
Myanmar people are held back by a
lack of opportunities and resources.
We created our school in order
to provide practical business
start-up knowledge combined with
the actual funding and resources
to start their business. We see
Myanmars mobile technology leap
as something that is ushering in
years of innovations in education
and access to financial services.
These advances will improve
the quality of small business in
Myanmar, which has been proven
around the world to generate the
most jobs. It is our goal to be at the
forefront of providing innovative
entrepreneur education and
resources.
Mr Hunt said the school
thrives on seeing families and
communities transformed through
small business opportunities.
The income from a small
business can enable a family to
increase education, health, travel,
which leads to knowledge.

This small businessman, a toymaker, profited hugely from his entrepreneur training with Opportunities NOW. According to
Adam Hunt, he cant keep up with orders now. Photos: Supplied

Myanmar people are

entrepreneurial at heart.
Theyve had to create their
own opportunities for the last
60 years, so given the right
resources, the right support, they
can achieve a lot
Adam Hunt
Opportunities Now

Those businesses create

jobs which then continue the
transformation throughout the
community. Myanmar people
are entrepreneurial at heart.
Theyve had to create their own
opportunities for the last 60 years,
so given the right resources, the
right support, they can achieve a
lot.
After applying to join the
program, those accepted receive
practical business start-up training
with the end goal of launching their
business.
This is not just a lecture, Mr
Hunt said. We are actually going
to help you start this thing.
Applicants get help in making a
reasonable and workable business
plan with financial projections.
Then, the school provides startup loans of between US$500 and
$2000.
The money comes from the
grassroots level of Mr Hunt and
his circle of friends, as well as
through a network of business
professionals in the United States
who visit Myanmar and help with
the coaching of entrepreneurs here.
Originally from Indiana, Mr

Hunt graduated from Purdue

University with a degree in Network
Engineering Technology in 2006. He
and his wife Beth have been living
and working here since 2013.
Everything we see confirms that
it was the right decision to move
here, Mr Hunt said. The challenge
is the slow pace of change and
the uncertainty around laws and
regulations, which make it difficult
for businesses to operate here.
One of the programs success
stories is an older gentleman who
makes colourful wooden toys by
hand and sells them to local preschools.
He had the toy-making skill
already when he came and took
our training. We helped him to do
the market research to solidify his
business plan including financial
projections. We helped him to see
with the right adjustments it could
be very profitable. We gave him a
loan to finance that expansion in
2013.
Now he cannot keep up with his
orders. The educational institutions
are the ones buying his stuff and he
has a backlog. We just gave him a
second loan to do more expansion.

Wi-Fi boom expected alongside

mobile explosion
Mobile data traffic expected to grow at 50 percent annually over
the next five years in the Asia Pacific region

Cisco Systems Business Development Manager

Sy Wann. Photo: Supplied

By SA Becker
AS mobile internet growth continues to explode
in Myanmar, the local representative of Cisco
systems says a WIFI boom, especially in public
places like shopping centers, will surely take
place in Myanmar like it did in Thailand.
Ciscos Yangon-based Business Development
Manager Sy Wann said that because of the
limitations of the mobile spectrum, places
like shopping malls wont be able to cope with
thousands of people using 3G so theyll most
likely install WIFI.
In Thailand, for example, in dense areas like
shopping malls, WIFI uploading is ubiquitous
because they cant cope with so many people
using 3G, he said.
Since Myanmars cities are served by mobile
towers using 3G and 4G equipment to handle
signals from thousands of smart phones theyre
likely to saturate as the radio signals of more and
more users start using high-bandwidth features
like streaming video causing a need for a shift
to WIFI in public spaces.
How the dense areas like downtown are going
to be served by WIFI remains to be seen, he
said. It might go according to the whim of each
property owner.
Headquartered in San Jose, California, Cisco is
one of the companies that has profited hugely
from the growth of the internet, with more than
$49 billion in revenues in 2015 and worldwide
operations building and selling internet
connectivity devices such as routers and switches
designed to connect the unconnected.
There is going to be growth in the fiber-tohome market, he said. Mobile is one thing -everyone can spend $50, can get a mobile phone
but say for business like a bank, you cant operate
a bank branch on a mobile connection which is
not that reliable and cannot keep up with the
demand. For a properly functioning bank branch
you need fixed line access you really need to
cable into your business. In other countries the
trend is super-fast access with fiber or ADSL
connections.
Every year, Cisco publishes the Visual

Networking Index, a study of

trends in Internet space looking
at average data consumption for
each region, average device and per
person data consumption.
Our prediction is that in the
Asia Pacific area, mobile data will
grow more than 50 percent per year
during the next 5 years. You can
imagine the explosion in traffic
and we estimate that 72 percent of
that traffic is going to come from
video.
In addition to his work at Cisco
Systems, Sy Wann serves as a
board member and sergeant at
arms for the Rotary Club of Yangon.
Current projects include a clean
water project in a village called
Magyee Bin Zu worth $80,000 and
supported by Rotary Clubs around
the world.
The other project, of which Say
Wann is particularly proud, is
Alliance for Smiles in which a
network of volunteer doctors, nurses
and specialists operated this month
of 92 children with cleft lips and
palates.
It was all free for the kids and it

was a great thing, he said. There

was one five year old who was afraid
of ridicule at school and he can
go to school now. There was a child
who had been on a feeding tube
since she was born. Now she can
eat.
Born in Yangon in 1973, Sy Wann
graduated in 1990 from BEHS 1 in
Dagon and then went to Bangkok
for a bachelors degree in IT from
Assumption University in 1994. He
then for a masters degree at the
University of Texas and spent a total
of 14 years working in the USA.
He had been doing IT work
for banks and was considering
returning to his native Myanmar
when he met the head of Cisco
Systems for Thailand by chance,
which led to his arrival back here in
2013.
Cisco Systems has very good
brand awareness. If you are in the
IT industry, you already know Cisco
and most IT people have some sort
of Cisco certification.
Even during the sanction years,
people still found a way to purchase
Cisco equipment.

Here in Myanmar, Cisco works

with reseller partners, training the
engineers and educating the end
users.
Sy Wann is glad he left the USA
and returned to his native land to
work for Cisco.
Theres the professional
challenge of building a business
from ground upbut there are
other thing -- helping the country
develop in other ways as well, he
said. If Myanmar keeps on the
path of reform, where we can keep
growing the business, and pull the
country out of the least developed
category -- hopefully I can find a
way to be part of it, he said.
Cisco-Aironet

10

Mobile money service helps farmers

By SA Becker

WITH a total of 430 outlets most of them

in Ayeyarwady and Rakhine states, as well
as Mon State and Bago Region Myanmar
Citizens Payment Services conducts a lot of
mobile money transactions between rural
farmers and agricultural outlets that sell
machinery and fertilizer.
Owned by Myanmar Citizens Bank, the
new mobile money service launched in April
under the brand name 663. The service
allows payment electronically, saving the
need to physically transport cash great
distances.
This is a mobile banking and agency
banking solution. Any person can walk into
a 663 outlet, open a wallet account and start
doing transactions, said chief operation
officer Ravi Abeysekera.
This is a wallet that you can use to make
payments. We support utility payments,
including YCDC payments, Yangon Electricity
and regional electricity companies for
payments.
Located at 663s headquarters in MICT
Park, Mr Abeysekera helped launch the
service as a pilot project in March, then
launched full commercial operations in April
following approval from the Central Bank of
Myanmar.
The 663 service also enables shop
payments and payments to anybody with
a mobile phone number and the recipient
does not need an account.

the supplier obtains a 663 electronic wallet

which can make a direct payment for the
produce.
MCB, 663s owner, is one of Myanmars
smaller banks, boasting 15 branches, most
in upper Myanmar. Each bank branch also
serves as a 663 outlet.
On the payroll side of the business, a
company would open a corporate wallet
linked to a web portal where the company
could transfer money to all their staff on a
regular basis.
Payroll and supplier payments are
key for these businesses and we make all
transactions simple and easy. There is no
problem with distance and the payments
are immediate, providing speed, security and
reliability. Payroll and supplier payments are
key to any mobile money operation to be
successful.
Explaining the difference between what
663 is doing and the telecom-led model
of mobile money, Mr Abeysekera said the
telecoms would mainly target smaller-value
transactions such as airtime top-ups.
The banks, however, conduct larger-value
transactions. While the transactions are
currently limited to a size of 500,000 kyats,
with a daily limit of 1 million kyats,
The size limit is mainly to do with antimoney laundering (AML) and to prevent
whats called terrorist finance, but Mr
Abeysekera hopes the Central Bank will
approve larger transaction amounts in
future.
Originally from Sri Lanka, Mr Abeysekera

Chief operation officer Ravi Abeysekera, standing center with glasses, shares a light moment with
the 663 team at their MICT Park offices. Photo: Aung Htay Hlaing

If you have a 663 account you get the

money directly into your 663 wallet. If you
dont have an account, you can walk into any
663 outlet and take out the money.
So far the servie has 430 agents, about 300
merchants and more than 2000 subscribers.
Mr Abeysekera says shop owners can become
663 agents if they are credible and established.
Another service offered is salary
payments. For companies that have staff
working in different areas of the country,
they can collect their money from the agents.
663s main super agent is Good Brothers
Company Ltd, which makes 663 strong in the
rural areas, according to Mr Abeysekera.
One type of transaction we are promoting
is the hire-purchase payment, Mr Abeysekera
said.
If you buy a small tractor, like a Kubota
or other brand, on a one-year hire purchase
agreement, when you purchase it you get
signed up with a 663 account and the monthly
repayment comes through 663 to the bank.
You can make cash payments at various
agent points and then transfer the money to
Good Brothers to pay off the tractor, he said.
In addition to hire-purchase and salary
payments, 663 also handles supplier
payments.
The convenience store purchases locally
produced vegetables and perishables.
That payment is happening in cash at the
moment. To convert that into e-transaction,

was educated in the United Kingdom as an

electronics engineer. He launched the first
telecom-centric payment solution in Sri
Lanka called EZ PAY. Today, the service is
called EZ CASH, which earned the mobile
operate he worked for a GSM award. Later,
he worked in India for MCHEK and in
Bangladesh for DEPLOY mobile money. .
Myanmar can move into complete nonphysical cash transactions in a very short
time. A lot of people have [smart]phones in
their hands so you can capitalise on that to
make all cash to electronic, he said.
Myanmar is leapfrogging into electronic
transactions, virtual cash, based on mobile
phones, rather than plastic cards that
Western countries have. Myanmar can
bypass that right into electronic transactions
on the mobile phone itself.
The Myanmar Citizens Bank and 663
are majority owned by CDSG, the Capital
Diamond Star Group.
Very soon youll be able to go to G&G
convenience store outlets and do purchases
through 663 mobile money, he said.
At the G&G outlets, the customer opens
the 663 smartphone app, scans the stores
QR code, enters the amount desired and the
pin number, and the transaction is done. A
receipt is printed by the shops point of sale
(POS) terminal. Those merchants that dont
have a POS terminal will get an SMS receipt
by telephone.

11

The team at MTI.com from left, U Aung Aung, U Min Oo, U Htin
Aung Kelvin Khine and U Zaw Min Oo. Photo: Aung Htay Hlaing

MTI group vies to become part of

fourth mobile operator team
Mobile money most likely to take stored value form, driven by telcos
By SA Becker
ONE of the best-informed people in
Myanmars telecoms landscape is U Zaw
Min Oo board member of public company
MTI, secretary general of the Myanmar
Computer Federation, executive committee
member of business association UMFCCI, and
executive committee member of the Myanmar
Entrepreneurs Association.
U Zaw Min Oo and his colleagues at MTI are
doing everything they can to become part of
the fourth telecom operator team.
We are already in the race and the new
consortium will select consultants, announce
an RFP [request for proposal] for tender
processing, and come up with a short list and
have negotiations. This process will be the
same as when the government chose other
operators and partner, he said.
U Zaw Min Oo says this open-up of the
telecoms market represents a new era for the
country.
Since 2011, when we were preparing for
the new telecom law, the main objective was
to allow the private sector participation in
the telecom industry. Before that, it was all
government. After that, with implementation
of the two new international foreign operators,
Ooredoo and Telenor, we started our new
mobile era.
The sudden rush to smartphones, in fact,
has created a leapfrogging effect where
people are skipping over cheaper phones and
heading straight to the cutting edge with their
first purchase.
Before we started, we thought we could
sell a lot of feature phones. But what we
saw was most of the people choosing to buy
smartphones so they could tap into social
media. They know Gmail and they know
Facebook. This means we are directly jumping
into the telecom wave, he said.
Not that this wont bring problems of its
own: We should be careful to educate our
people about how to use the mobile internet;
otherwise it could also be a problem. He lists
excessive use of money and time as two possible
worries both already in short supply among
the 70 percent of the nations population already
been reached by the mobile internet, with the
border areas the least-served.
Covering such a large and diverse area
creates problems of its own.
We have just a few local language software
applications in this market, he said. Most of
the applications are in English, and although
translation is supported from Google it is not
yet 100 percent accurate.
U Zaw Min Oo said there are three mobile
money models in existence: a bank-led model,
a telco-led model and a third-party model
such as PayPal. He said Myanmar had been
practising with bank-led models, but that this
may not be the right approach.
When you look at similar countries, the
most success has been with the telco-led model.
The ability to transfer money is very good for
Myanmar. If you have a proper mobile money
system, you can protect it from the black market.
I prefer a third-party model, but the most

successful in Africa, for example, is the telcoled model. That is a key for mobile money
when you set up mobile money, the most
important thing is your network.
The operator has top-up cards all around
the country. You can cash out the money.
When you consider the money, cash out and
cash in, there will be an outlet. It is not like a
bank, he said.
Zaw Min Oo said 90 percent of Myanmar
people were unbanked meaning that the
telco-led model would be easier and probably
more successful than a bank-led model.
MTI was formed in November 2012 with 87
entities, and now has 11 members on their
board, all of whom are owners of the company.
MTI owns MPSS, which stands for Myanmar
Payment Solutions Services, a company that
specialises in providing online and mobile
payment solutions. In turn, MPSS is the
technical services provider for 663, the mobile
money services arm of Myanmar Citizens
Bank.
Other members include U Aung Aung, U Min
Oo and U Htin Aung Khine, each of whom is an
ICT professional.
Finance director U Min Oo of MTI.com.
mm serves as president of the Yangon Region
Computer Professionals Association, an
organisation with 13,000 members. He also
is an executive committee member of MCF,
the joint secretary of the 15,000-member
Myanmar Computer Professionals Association,
and serves as treasurer of the Myanmar
Business Executives Association (MBE).
I strongly believe the mobile revolution
in Myanmar is really happening. It was only
two years ago that the international telecom
operators came in. Now they are starting
the revolution [which will] bring a lot of
benefits for the poor people. There will be a lot
of apps for health, education and agriculture,
and there will be a lot of industries which will
benefit, he said.
U Min Oo also said cautioned there could be
some downsides, however, or at least things to
be cautious about when operating with such a
low-income customer base.
Poor people have a limited income in their
daily lives but now with the mobile revolution
they have to spend more money to use
social networks. This is time-consuming and
expense-consuming. There will be pros and cons
which people have to be aware of.
Chair of MTI.com.mm is Htin Aung Khine, also
known as Kelvin. He serves as president of the
Yangon Region Computer Industry Association,
vice president of the Myanmar Computer
Industry Association, central executive
committee member of the Myanmar Computer
Federation, executive committee member of
the UMFCCI and central executive committee
member of the Myanmar Young Entrepreneurs
Association.
The mobile revolution is in a tremendous
growth stage. It can reduce the digital divide
in every Myanmar village and city, including
for farmers and the agriculture sector, he said.
During the mobile era, MTI will grow
together with the mobile payments and
telecommunications business, he said.

12

Smartphone first
Samsung caters to demands for larger
screens and video streaming
By SA Becker
SOUTH Korean mobile phone giant
Samsung, which is head-to-head
with Apples iPhone in dominating
the worlds high-end smartphone
market, sees growth in larger
screens and video streaming.
Malaysian Richard See, Samsungs
marketing lead who works together
with a strong local team in Yangon,
says Myanmar people are starting to
prefer larger screens on their mobile
devices.
Now in Myanmar they love big
screens, he said in an interview
at his MICT park office. Myanmar
people are starting to go on social
media sites to watch movies
and YouTube videos on their
smartphones.
Mr See, who joined Samsung here
in 2013, approaches the local market
with different strategies for different
products.
Samsungs lowest-priced model,
a feature phone, is K24,000. From
there prices go all the way to
K990,000 for the top-of-the-line
Samsung Galaxy S6edge+, boasting
the worlds first dual-edge screen.
Samsung also carries a range of
tablet and wearable devices.
As a mobile manufacturer,
one of our advantages is that we
control the entire supply chain. We
manufacture everything from zero
to the complete device. We do the
whole range, so we have full control
in terms of how fast we can bring a
device into the market. We also have
innovation labs and R&D centre
around the world which helps us
product innovations.
Another Samsung characteristic,
he said, was focusing on
consumer research, discovering
what consumers desire, and
understanding the difference
between what teenagers and
working adults when it comes to

mobile phone features.

We are looking at what kind
of devices people will be using in
the future. If you go to one of our
Samsung brand shops you have
a full selection of our devices.
There are a variety of options in
terms of what kind of features you
want, what price point, and what
specifications in terms of memory,
display, processing speed, device
designs and megapixels for the
camera, he said.
Samsungs current bestseller
is the Samsung Galaxy Note 5,
launched two months ago as part
of a global launch locally priced at
K880,000.
Samsung is also the worlds
largest manufacturer of televisions
global number 1, for the last nine
consecutive years. They also make
personal computers, but dont
distribute them in Myanmar.
When Myanmar people want to
go online, it is definitely smartphone
first, he said. It is kind of a
surprise, but before the smartphone
revolution in Myanmar, we thought
feature phones would be doing
much better.
Only two years ago, when the sole
mobile operator was still MPT and
SIM cards will still expensive ($2,000
ten years ago) customers already
had smart phones if they could
afford one.
He said Samsungs Myanmar
operation is noticing is a tendency
among customers to upgrade to
better models over time. New
customers, however, are often using

Samsung's head of marketing Richard See at the MICT park Samsung office. Photo: Thiri Lu

a smartphone and the internet

for the very first time.
In our communications
materials, we are constantly sharing
information on how to improve
the use of a smartphone. For many
Myanmar users, they are going
online for the first time, using
Facebook for the first time, and
everything is a first for them. A lot
of people might not realise what
they are actually doing and probably
dont even realise the actual
capability of their smartphone.
Samsungs Myanmar marketing
strategy includes country-specific
social media, including daily contact
with customers about products
and showcasing of features and
functions, helping people learn new
ways of using their smartphones.
We ran a brand campaign that
focuses on Samsung as a brand. We
have different product strategies

If we launch in New York we launch

the same week in Myanmar.
Richard See
Samsung Myanmar

and a brand strategy, to position

Samsung as a premium brand.
We want people to aspire to own a
Samsung product and to choose us
not only by price.
Originally established in 1938
as part of a trading company that
dealt with local groceries and later
became famous for televisions,
including some of the earliest
flat-screen televisions, Samsung
Electronics was re-established in
1969 and just recently celebrated
the companys 46th anniversary on
November 1.
The company is consistently
ranked in the top 10 of global
brands by Interbrand. We are
global number seven company for
the second year, so we are moving
close, Mr See said.
For technology firms and as a
global company, you always need
to be innovative, in all aspects:
marketing, distribution, sales,
products and human resources.
Samsung grows this culture
internally that we have to do the
best.
The high-energy, high-pressure
environment is not for everybody,
according to Mr See. If you love
the challenge, Samsung is for you.

In a constantly evolving market,

how you plan to market, how you
communicate to customers this is
key in a very competitive industry.
We are strong in the mid and
high smart ranges, but we compete
at all levels. For Samsung, in every
country where we invest, we have
a very strong culture to be number
one. In terms of product segment,
we want to be number one in every
sector thats our vision.
Another advantage at Samsung,
he says, is full support from the
global office.
Our products are the latest in the
market. Even though Myanmar is
considered an emerging market, if
we launch in New York we launch
the same week in Myanmar. We try
to bring our products to the market
at the same time globally.
This makes Samsung fully
capable here in Myanmar, and Mr
See points out that consumers no
longer need to travel to get the
latest Samsung products.
We launched our Galaxy Note 5
two months ago at the exact same
time we launched in Singapore. We
had people coming in at 4:30am to
Hledan Junction in Yangon, lining up
to buy our new products..

Note 5 and S6edge

GearS2 Classic

Gear S2
galaxy note5 gallery with spen gold

13
VIEWS

Health in the
smartphone age
By Perrie Briskin

MODERN contraceptive methods such as intrauterine devices (IUDs) and

emergency contraception (EC) may not be the first thing you think of when
opening Facebook and Viber, but, for many women in Myanmar, these
platforms are new sources of reproductive health information.
At the health NGO called PSI, where I serve as a communications
manager, our focus is increasingly on these new channels. Questions we
receive often in our Yangon office via Facebook and Viber include:
Will an intrauterine device also known as the T, get lost inside my body?
Where can I buy emergency contraception?
If I use contraception now, can I get pregnant later in life?
Since 2011, PSI has had a reproductive health hotline to answer questions
and refer people to our network of over 1000 private Sun Quality Health
clinics. We expanded this hotline to Facebook at OKQualityBirthSpacing
in 2014 and to Viber at +95 9976118372 last month. No one was surprised
when questions to Facebook and Viber quickly outnumbered telephone
calls.

In Myanmar, reproductive and sexual health information remains highly

sensitive, especially among unmarried women. A recent study from the
University of Ottawa reports that, in peri-urban Yangon, misinformation and
rumours abound regarding contraceptive methods and side effects, which
in turn limits their access and uptake. Lower rates of contraception use are
linked to higher rates of maternal deaths. Myanmar has the highest rate
of maternal deaths in Southeast Asia. A leading cause of maternal deaths
is unsafe abortions from unwanted pregnancy, which, according to the
Ministry of Healths Family Planning 2020 Implementation Plan, is highest
among women aged 15 to 19 years.
Smartphones can help fill this health knowledge gap. In many developing
countries, people already receive SMS texts with health information to
their feature phone. However, the opportunity with smartphones is much
greater. More engaging experiences for users and more measurable results
for administrators make it more likely that smartphones can have an
impact on changing health behaviours. For example, we are finding that
people who choose to message us on Facebook or Viber ask more questions
in a single conversations than those that call our hotline. Facebook and
Viber are platforms that already highly engaging and enable more private
conversations, allowing people to dig deeper into reproductive health issues
with our operators and doctors.
Despite the ever-increasing smartphone use and network penetration
rates in Myanmar, it will take some time for the population to catch up.
Mobile app users in the US usually know within one to three taps where
an apps drop-down menu is. In Myanmar, finding a menu may not be as
intuitive, which makes user-testing and customisation of tools to the local
contexts essential. In addition to Facebook pages, PSIs maternal health app
Maymay and family health app Kyan Mar Yae, both created in partnership
with Ooredoo and local IT social enterprise Koe Koe Tech, have been
substantially improved through ongoing user testing. Feedback from users
ensures that health information in Myanmar language is as easy and fun to
access as possible.
PSI is of course not the only organisation in Myanmar sharing health
information digitally. Many private companies are answering user health
questions on Facebook. Other NGOs have released apps, including Link
Up from the International HIV/AIDS Alliance and Mate from Marie
Stopes International. For those interested in learning more, the monthly
Information and Communication Technology for Development meeting at
tech incubator Phandeeyar (http://phandeeyar.org/) is a great place to start.
NGOs and donors are working together to reduce duplicating smartphone
app efforts. Ultimately, the more accessible and trusted health information
in Myanmar the better.
Perrie Briskin is communications manager for digital media at PSI Myanmar.

Saijai Liangpunsakul of Dimagi social enterprise. Photo: Thiri Lu

Mobile app supports

healthcare workers
By SA Becker
HELP is on the way: Pregnant
women across Myanmar are now
being served by mobile technology
enabling health workers to provide
better care for mothers-to-be, as well
as those living with tuberculosis or
HIV.
The US-based social enterprise
Dimagi distributes CommCare,
an open-source mobile platform.
Dimagis Yangon-based project
manager Saijai Liangpunsakul helps
Myanmar-based NGOs to deploy the
CommCare application described
as a revolutionary job aid-tool that
contains a checklist for danger signs,
decision support, and educational
prompts.
Myanmar has the worst health
indicators in the region. We hope the
app will improve the quality of the
services that frontline health workers
give to patients, she said.
Ms Liangpunsakul a Thai
national who graduated from a US
university in Middlebury, Vermont,
in 2012 with a degree in economics
worked on mobile projects in Laos,
Thailand, Nepal, Indonesia, Pakistan,
Bangladesh, South Africa, and Zambia
before coming to Myanmar.
Whats exciting about Myanmar
is they are starting out with mobile
technology, and we can take lessons
learned from other countries and use
it for Myanmar. In other countries like

Thailand, they have existing health

systems and they add mobile on top.
But here, there is an advantage in
going straight to mobile technology.
Dimagi, which gets funding from
both USAID and the Bill & Melinda
Gates Foundation, uses the same
method in every country showing
health field workers and agricultural
extension workers how to use the
Commcare mobile app.
The platform is free for small NGOs.
When there are more than 50 health
workers we charge US$1 per month per
health worker. We also have pro-bono
software use, she said. We measure
success by impact, team satisfaction
and profit, in that order.
Ms Liangpunsakul says what
matters is not so much the mobile
technology, but the underlying system
which it can enhance.
Mobile technology cannot fix
a broken system. If the system is
broken, it wont work. You need to
have a system already in place and
the mobile technology will enable the
system, she said.
Deployed in Myanmar for the past
year, the Commcare mobile app is
designed to help on-site diagnostics
that community health workers can
use when they are in the field finding
treatments for people with HIV,
tuberculosis or malaria.
Here in rural area with few
doctors, frontline health workers
are the main source of health

information. They are the heroes

in the community because they
provide counseling on maternal and
child health and support HIV and TB
patients. They go door to door, carry
various paper forms and sometimes
have to travel an hour to submit the
information, she said.
Armed with CommCare, health
workers only need to carry a mobile
phone instead of bulky documentation.
Its a job aid tool that helps them
track, prioritise and manage patients.
The data will be sent in real time to
the clinic or health centre, replacing
burdensome paper registers and more
efficient data processes. The app also
works offline, she said.
For pregnant women at the village
level, the CommCare app enables the
health centre to know how many of the
women have danger signs and need to
be referred to clinics, she said.
They can just submit the form by
the mobile phone and the healthcare
worker can talk to the superviser if they
have any questions. The important
part of the app is we provide decision
support: For example, if the patient has
fever and cough, the decision support
helps health worker know what to do.
Also of primary health concern in
Myanmar is the prevalence of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis as well as
malaria.
For TB we work with FHI360 and
other NGOs. For malaria we have a
project with the American Refugee
Committee (ARC), Ms Liangpunsakul
said.
In the Malaria project, the American
Refugee Committee (ARC) has volunteers
along the Thai-Myanmar border.
If you live in village and might have
malaria and you go to the centre to
get tested, the health workers will use
CommCare to record, diagnose and send
information in real time to the NGOS,
she said.
Its exciting to witness how mobile
technology is transforming healthcare
in Myanmar. I hope the CommCare app
will enhance capacities of the heroes
in the community, help them to better
communicate, connect and save more
lives.
For more about the enterprise see:
http://www.commcarehq.org/
For more about Dimagis work see:
http://www.dimagi.com/blog/dimagiin-myanmar/

14

Developer sees unlimited

possibilities in Myanmar
mobile revolution
By SA Becker

TWO years ago, while relaxing at home

during Thingyan, Ko Phyo Arkar Lwin,
founder and CEO of Hexcode Technologies
Yangon, suddenly realised that the existing
internet conversation system called IRC
could be leveraged with a lot more features
and used for business.
Thats when he started working on what
has turned into Phwa.be his own group
communications system which now has 112
users mostly friends in Yangons high-tech
community.
Since his original concept, others across
the world had similar ideas one of which
became Slack.com, an app that helps
businesses reduce meeting times and emails
by putting the relevant people together
online in a chat room and keeping track of
what they say.
The fact that Slack.com is already
valued in US$3 billion after one year didnt
discourage Ko Phyo Arkar Lwin. In fact, he
was motivated by it. He says his own Phwa.
be will be even better.
Slack.com is my main competitor.
Just a few months after I got my ideas
laid out, I found out about Slack.com a
communication platform for teamwork.
It had many of the features I planned to
include and thats what made the spark in
my mind, he said.
If Myanmar developers can push their
hobby by putting in all their efforts and
resources, local people can compete with
startups like Slack.com, he said. Our
culture has a strong desire to innovate and
I believe Myanmar people can compete
successfully with tech giants from Silicon
Valley, he said.

Ko Phyo Arkar Lwin says he knows a lot

of good tech people right here at home
who have both the imagination and skill
to compete successfully with foreign
innovators.
We can do it. Theres no doubt about
it. I have high confidence in the start-up
community of Myanmar and we can all do it
together.
His stated aim is to foster and promote
the local technology community to create
unicorns start-ups like Slack.com and
Uber.com.
Slack.com got to the $3 billion valuation
within a year. They had angel investors and
they monetised it by limiting features and
then selling it for $8 per person per month
for extra features and for companies.
Phwa.be is a group chat room with
innovative features.
You can post images and videos inside
a chat room and notify each other like
Twitter, he said.
Text formatting can be accomplished
in full markdown which means the
capabilities are greatly enhanced including
source codes, images, videos and voice.
When I saw Slack.com, I saw
opportunities for how to compete with
them. We already had 80 percent of the
functionalities of Slack but with more
unique features.
Features like topic modes similar to
forums and enabling users to review
earlier threaded conversations are now
in development, and Ko Phyo Arkar Lwin
says hell release them for web, mobile and
desktop.
He wants to see people build real-time,
public communities within the system and
use them as a private group collaboration
tool inside companies.

Phyo Arkar, fourth from left, and his developer team from HexCode. Photo: Staff

What Phwa.be gives you is a platform

for collaborative communications, he said.
Even at current beta stage, it is far more
effective than using Facebook group chats,
or Google Hangouts: It is more effective
because it is distraction-free, tightly
integrated and a lot faster.
Features include file sharing, file preview,
push-to-talk audio, webcam messages and
voting all with privacy.
We will offer private hosting features
for companies on their own servers. This
gives security and privacy and it gives great
capability in work-related communication.
Ko Phyo Arkar Lwin, 31, runs a team of
four people out of his home in North Dagon.
Our four members have a total of eight
years of experience in various types of fullstack development, machine learning, realtime systems and distributed computing.
Before starting Phwa.be, Phyo Arkar and
his team at HexCode Technologies worked
on data science and analysis machine
learning projects for a client in the US
for five years. He stopped working for
the foreign client to focus his attention
on home-grown apps, funded by his own
savings.
I believe we will become a billion-dollar

business, he said. We just need angel

investors, like YCombinator and Founder
Institute, to kick-start things. he said.
Another of Ko Phyo Arkar Lwins indevelopment projects is a Delivre.me, a
buy-sell map-integrated delivery system
app with tracking capabilities like Uber ,
Amazon and Craigslist combined.
While both Phwa.be and Delivre.me are
still in development, Ko Phyo Arkar Lwin
remains very confident about the future of
the local tech industry.
There are unlimited things we can do.
I see a lot of potential in young people,
including my team. Each of us has the
power to make a difference, Ko Phyo Arkar
Lwin said. Imagination and self-motivation
are the most important things that keep us
going.
Ko Phyo Arkar Lwin wants to focus on
developing his own apps instead of working
on outsourced projects. When he saw Slack.
com get $15 million in funding, he said to
himself, We can do that!
I see lots of smart, driven, innovative,
high-potential tech start-ups in Myanmar
who want to make a change. They just need
investments.

Mobile revolution means paradigm shift for Myanmar

By S.A. Becker

When I first arrived at The Myanmar

Times in December 2013, our human
resources manager Khine Su gave
me a SIM card. They were very
expensive and had to be provided by
the newspaper.
Within six months I was in
Mandalay as Myanmar Times Bureau
Chief and was able to buy my own
SIM card, I think for K5000 at that
time.
Now SIM cards are down to K1500
and millions of citizens are getting
on the internet via smartphone for
the first time. Soon theyll be able
to get better access to education,
healthcare, financial services and
all kinds of other benefits from their
smartphones things undreamed of
in years past.
As you read the stories in this
report all written by me except the
Vox Pop and an opinion piece look
how far Myanmar has come so very
quickly and try to imagine what the
future will be. Think of what people
can do with their mobile phones
now; think of the information they

Stuart Alan Becker. Photo: Aung Khant

can access, the possibilities for all the

50-plus million people of Myanmar.
When I was in Arizona in the
year 2000 at a small community
newspaper, I had the honour of
closing down the darkroom. The
photo editor was unhappy.
Weve always done it this way, he
said of his film and smelly chemicals
and costly photo print paper.
Digital photography is now the
dominant form, even in cinema. So
that paradigm shifted and Kodak is

not the company today that it once

was by a long shot.
Just as in the advent of the steam
engine, the cotton gin, the automobile
and the jet aircraft, technical change
always brings economic change. The
mobile revolution in Myanmar is no
exception.
In the US, Europe and most of the
rest of the world, populations went
through technological revolutions
with the personal computer, then
dial-up internet, then cellular
feature phones. But Myanmar is
the first country where the majority
of citizens are accessing both
computing power and the internet
for the first time straight from
smartphones.
Think of what that means for
newspapers like The Myanmar Times.
Think of what it means for every
aspect of life and business.The
winners of the future are going to
be the ones who have the vision
to create entirely new universes
of service, limited only by their
imaginations and ability to persuade.
Let me extend a big thanks to
everyone I spoke to for this special
report, especially Rene Meza of

Ooredoo, Richard See of Samsung, Sy

Wann of Cisco Systems, Aung Aung
of MTI, Takashi Nagashima of MPT
and Petter Furberg of Telenor, for
seeing the value of my idea called
Mobile Myanmar.
Also, I would like to pay respect
to three pioneers of Myanmars ICT
sector, U Thein Oo and U Tin Win
Aung (and his daughter Cindy) of
MCC, as well as U Khun Oo of the
MCF, for the important and painful
groundwork they laid for todays
mobile revolution.
And finally to the people who
foster and promote development like
David Madden of Phandeeyar, Phyo
Arkar of HexCode, developer Khine
Lin and his team, Adam Hunt of
Opportunities Now and Ye Myat Min
of NEX. These are the people who are
going to come up with the technical
means to take Myanmar so far
ahead, you wont believe what will
have happened in the next few years.
Hope you get the best information
you have ever seen on mobile
technology in Myanmar and I look
forward to working with all of you
in the very near future. Myanmars
mobile revolution has just begun.

Written and prepared by

S.A. Becker
Photographers Aung Khant, Zar
Ni Phyo, Thiri Lu, Aung Htay Hlaing,
Naing Win Tun.

Staff writers Htut Oo Aung, Myo

Satt

Translators Mya Kay Khine Soe, Thiri

Min Htun, Zar Zar Soe, Kyawt Darli
Linn, Zaw Zaw Htwe, Sandar Lwin,
Thet Hlaing, Emoon

Contributors Perrie Briskin

Editors Myo Lwin, Wade Guyitt
Sub editor Mya Kay Khine Soe
Cover photograph Staff
Cover design Ko Htway
Page layout Ko Khin Zaw

For feedback and enquiries,

please contact
stuart.becker@gmail.com

15

The NEX big thing: App entrepreneur

looks to education and health
By SA Becker
ONE of the most successful young
mobile app developers in Myanmar
is Ko Ye Myat Min, CEO of NEX,
whose company has attracted more
than US$350,000 in investment.
The tech entrepreneur,
nicknamed Jeff, carries out app
development work for telecoms like
Ooredoo and MPT with a team of 28
employees at his upstairs office in
Sanchaung.
With his 25th birthday next week,
Ko Ye Myat Min sees education
and healthcare as the two biggest
opportunities to serve the Myanmar
population as it undergoes a
connectivity transformation.
The thing Im most excited
about in the mobile revolution
is open education, he said. Im
sure within the next two years
at least 90 percent of people will
be connected to mobile. Now
Myanmar has a cheap and efficient
way to distribute educational
content with more interaction and
more lessons, and we are providing
the experience through mobile.
On the healthcare side, Ko Ye
Myat Min said he thinks theres a
universe of opportunity. He imagines
people using their smartphones
to connect with doctors, who
from pictures and descriptions of
symptoms can diagnose patients
and suggest treatment quickly and
from far away.
This is called telemedicine, Ko
Ye Myat Min said. When you send
photos, the doctor can see whats
happening. Nobody has solved the
problems of Myanmar healthcare
yet. We have been trying to solve it
forever, but nobody has managed to
crack it.
He said he believes the beauty
of mobile technology is that
Myanmar people can build apps
inexpensively, limited only by
the drive and imagination of the
developer.
You need the right motivation
and the right imagination, he
said. We need to think more
deeply about the problems we can
solve. Here in Myanmar it is fairly
cheap to live. You can think of the
problem and solve it out of your
bedroom. You can get together with
friends and motivate each other.
Amid all the changes to
Myanmars mobile scene, Ko Ye
Myat Min says you cant forget
about cloud technology.
All the apps have a cloud
component they have to be in
both places on the mobile device
and on the servers somewhere that
you cant see.
He also sees media
transformation as a key component
in Myanmars mobile revolution.
The mobile revolution starting
point happened with newspapers
getting online and with fiber
connections. This was the ignition
point. And when the mobile
telecom operators came in, it
changed and then everybody had to
have a smartphone.
It all started when Ko Ye Myat

NEX CEO Ko Ye Myat Min. Photo: Aung Min Ye Zaw

Min was about 10 years old with his

cousins brother Ko Lu Aye Oo who
lived next door.
We had an old PC and I learned
how to fix photos, filling them in
pixel by pixel. Aye Oo taught me
how to do computer stuff, but my
parents couldnt afford to buy me a
computer.
By age 12, he started
programming in C++, reading books
and playing computer games like
DOOM, going on to learn Java and
Cold Fusion and some of the earlier
computer languages.
I clearly remember my parents
scolding me about buying a K8000
per month internet package, he
laughed. Because of the internet,
I started learning about HTML and
got into the web. Yahoo came up,
Alta Vista, Geocities. Then I started
learning about HTML and Flash.
Both Ko Ye Myat Min and his
parents attended U Thein Oos
class at Myanmar Computer Center
(MCC).
An early success at MCC for
Ko Ye Myat Min was winning a
national competition by building a
program that teaches kids English
using PowerPoint, including a report
generated by Excel. He was 15
years old.
We got a cash prize and a bonus
of free courses from MCC.
With middle-class parents and
all his cousins gone abroad to

study, Ko Ye Myat Min, eager to get

out of the house, went to study at
Republic Polytechnic in Singapore.
He wanted an Apple computer
desperately so he started doing
freelance work building websites
for restaurants, cafes and small
businesses and saved enough
money to buy a MacBook Pro.
Buying that Mac allowed me
to write software for iPhones and
Android phones. Thats when these
devices started to get popular, he
said.
He was with the first batch
of students at mobile app
development classes and, with
other students, developed an app
that could access the schools
learning management system via
mobile so students could look at
their grades on phones.
The authorities took a dim view
of the app and the students had to
take it down from Google Play, but
it was important in that in showed
students how mobile technology
could apply to their lives.
I was feeling rebellious back
then, he laughed. A lot of people
started to know us as geeks who
challenged the principals office.
Later he attended Singapore
Management University, but was
so busy with clients his grades
dropped owing to missed classes.
Just as the school started sending
warning letters, he met his angel

investor via Facebook an

Australian man named Ned Phillips
whose $50,000 enabled Ko Ye Myat
Min to incorporate the company
and lay the administrative
groundwork for NEX, purchase
equipment and start marketing.
Today, with his team of 28, NEX
carries out mobile consultancy
services teaching people how to
deploy mobile apps in Myanmar,
designing user interfaces for mobile
apps and websites, developing
mobile apps and carrying out social
media management services for
clients.
NEXs biggest client is currently
state-backed MPT, doing graphic
design and managing social media
accounts. NEX has also developed
an election monitoring mobile
app called Kyeet for the Myanmar
ICT for Development Organisation
(MIDO), backed by USAID.
If there is fraud, you can use the
app to report it, he said. Kyeet has
4000 to 5000 users on the platform,
connected to its website.
Earlier, the NEX team developed
an anonymous social network
called Hush, which Ko Ye Myat Min
describes as like Facebook but
without profiles.
We had 20,000 users but we
shut it down purely as a financial
decision, because we didnt have
time to do it.
NEX also did an internal project

for Ooredoo, part of the telecom

operators MWoman initiative.
Ko Ye Myat Min is also concerned
about privacy for Myanmar citizens
who he says often agree to fine
print when they download content
without knowing what theyve said
yes to.
Some Myanmar companies are
trying to mine user data without
explicitly educating the users. So,
when people download the apps,
they would agree to things but they
dont necessarily know what they
are agreeing to.
Hes also wary about how
Facebook tracks peoples internet
movements and wants others to
be aware of their own privacy and
how to protect it.
I was looking at a car dealer
website a particular Honda and
I closed the browser and then went
to Facebook. The next day there
was a sidebar on Facebook showing
the exact ad of the exact Honda I
had been looking at.
He explained how it worked and
why people should be concerned.
Facebook has things called
partner networks, essentially a
cookie in the browser. When you
open a website, thats how they
identify who you are. They report
back to the server your unique
computer address.
The server keeps track of these,
plus all the web pages you visit and
all the partners of Facebook, he
said. Every single time you click on
that link they track what you click
on, and now they know what kind
of articles you are reading.
Ko Ye Myat Min believes
technologists have responsibilities
to point people in the right
direction when it comes to privacy.
No matter what kind of apps or
software you create, you need to
tell people what the app is going
to do. Just tell them. Teach them
or tell them that you are going to
access something that belongs to
them. I think it is more important
to build trust.
Ye Myat Min believes humanity
is now in the era of Skynet, the
fictional super-system that takes
over humanity in the Terminator
films.
It is only a matter of time before
they know where people live, what
home appliances they have, their
heart rate, blood pressure, weight,
and all these things.
His vision is not to create a killer
app Skynet-like or otherwise but
to help others create their best
work.
If I can contribute to many
people, thats what I want to do.
Right now Im helping two other
guys start their companies and
taking small equity positions. Some
of the best companies are started
by non-techies who have a vision.
I want to help people be better in
tech and do more things.
We have a network of investors
and we want to be a platform
that can help people grow their
business. I want to play a part in
education and health, he said.

16

How the IT sector evolved

since the 1970s
By SA Becker

IT was way back in 1974 when

27-year-old Tin Win Aung watched
the first IBM mainframe computer
arrive at the University Computer
Centre at Yangons Institute of
Economics.
Even though he and schoolmate U
Thein Oo were studying under the old
socialist system, they had the good
fortune of taking business classes in
accounting and finance, subjects that
would prepare them to grow their
IT businesses decades later, as the
governments policies began to evolve
in a positive direction.
In those days, big mainframe
computers were most used for
research. When the PC, or personal
computer, appeared much later,
it would kick off an IT revolution.
Today, the battery-operated,
handheld smartphone has become
the key instrument in yet another
paradigm shift. In Myanmar, where
almost everyone missed out on
PC ownership due to a shuttered
economy, affordably smartphones
have brought about a nationwide
mobile revolution.
Teachers including Dr Khin Maung
Kyi, who had come back from the
United States with an MBA from
Harvard University and a PhD from
Cornell University, helped lay the
groundwork in general systems
theory that years later would bear
fruit including Myanmars mobile
transformation. Another influential
teacher of the day was Dr Khin Ohn
Thant.
Both U Thein Oo and I were
together under those teachers and
the subjects were new at the time,
he said during an interview at his
MCC Junction Square office.
He credits those teachers with
providing the initial relevant training

in systems theory which became a

key component in the early stages of
Myanmars IT culture.
Theirs was a very generic
approach -- and one of the greatest
contributions to Myanmars success
story, he said.
Today, U Tin Win Aung serves as
chair of his MCC group of companies
and his daughter Cindy serves as CEO.
The eldest of six children, U Tin
Win Aung was born in 1947 in Thonze
about 75 miles north of Yangon
on the way to Pyay. His father was
a manager in the transportation
business and young Tin Win Aung
worked in his familys small grocery
shop. By the time he was in the 8th
grade, he was already in business,
selling snacks to the other kids
during the afternoon lunch break.
After matriculation, U Tin Win
Aung enrolled at Yangons Institute of
Economics.
All our professors were from
America. Even under the socialist
economy of those days, we were
studying all capitalist subjects.
Both U Tin Win Aung and his
colleague U Thein Oo got the same
degree from the Institute of Economics
and have been friends ever since.
In 1983, Tin Win Aungs wife worked
for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs
and got assigned to New York in the
United Nations representative office.
Naturally, her husband and daughter
Cindy went along. The experience was
transformative for all of them.
In New York he attended a PC
training school, and brought back to
Yangon a Sinclair computer, hooking
it up to a black and white television
as the monitor.
When I brought the Sinclair back
to Myanmar, this was the beginning
of MCC, he said.
Today, U Tin Win Aung serves as
chair of MCC Myanmar Computer
Company which has 180 locations,

providing both education services

and ITC services. MCC has four
campuses and five schools, located
in Yangon, Mandalay, Nay Pyi Taw, as
well as Yadanarpon Cyber City on the
hills above Mandalay on the road to
Pyin Oo Lwin.
One of MCCs specialties is
business process outsourcing.
For example, more than half of
the electric power customers in
Yangon, and half of all those electric
power customers in Myanmar, get
electric bills produced by MCC in
an agreement with the Ministry of
Electric Power.
MCC also runs Myanmars prisoner
management and information
system, keeping track for the
judicial system of people who are
incarcerated in Myanmars prisons.
U Tin Win Aung says MCC provides
ICT services to both the public and
private sector.
We are the biggest ICT services
company.
But back in 1986, when MCC was
established as the very first computer
training school in Myanmar, all they
had was the Sinclair from the US and
an IBM PC from Singapore.
We didnt even know what would
happen and we still had a socialist
government.
They trained even through the
dark days of the 1988 uprising and
subsequent crackdown. After 1989,
when the government shifted toward
a market economy, U Tin Win Aung
rushed to the company registration
office and got the registration
number 7/89.
We learned what a company was
and how to set up our school as a
partnership. We were lucky because
even under the socialist government,
we had good teachers and learned
about business and finance.
The mid to late 1980s marked
the beginning of the IT industry in

Ma Chaw Khin Khin, known as Cindy, left, and her father U Tin Win Aung at the
Junction Square offices of MCC. Photo: Aung Htay Hlaing

Myanmar. Thats when U Tin Win

Aungs MCC began to expand into
software development, systems
integration, networking, and selling
hardware and software.
U Tin Win Aung and his old friend
U Thein Oo parted ways, each with
his own company. U Thein Oo
emphasised software development
and U Tin Win Aung focused on
education and IT services.
Today, U Tin Win Aung serves
as chair of MCC Group, director of
the Myanmar Telecommunication
Network, president of the Computer
Industry Association, a member
of the Computer Professionals
Association and of the Computer
Enthusiasts Association.
The MCF was founded in 1998 Both
he and U Thein Oo originally served
as vice presidents of the MCF with
U Thein Oo later becoming MCFs
president.
It was that original group of MCF
members who provided the initial
thinking about how to promote
awareness of technology that led
directly to the beginning of MICT
Park. In 1999, all the IT companies
were members of the MCF. With help
from then-deputy minister U Thaung
Tin, 11 companies got together and
contributed K10 million each to
establish a software park.
To get ideas of how to make it
successful, they visited software
parks in Malaysia and India to see
what they had done.
Following Phase One, the

government wanted us to invite more

companies and we got an additional
37 new company members, bringing
the total to 50.
The complex was designed by the
deputy minister in the Technology
Ministry, who carried out the work
free of charge.
Today, U Tin Win Aung is a
founding member and board member
of Myanmar ITC Development
Corporation (MITCDC), the
organization which owns MICT Park.
The original founders are on the
board until now, he said. Devices
are getting smaller and cheaper and
the business structure is changing
very rapidly for the whole world. One
is the global things, and the other is
that the timing coincides with the
Myanmar reform.
U Tin Win Aung sees a shift in
the whole industry because the
smartphone enables IT for everyone.
The main thing is the volume of
the users. This is the driver of new
business. Mobile alone is not enough.
Behind mobile technologies are the
data centres, the cloud computing it
is important to have the backbone.
Today anybody can be a mobile user
and a developer. The backbone is not
for anybody, he said.
Yes, there is mobile, but dont
forget behind mobile there are data
sites all over the world and it is a very
big system.
He added that PC sales were
declining as a result of the mobile
revolution in Myanmar.

MCC CEO promotes mobile apps development

By SA Becker
ALL the people in all the little shops by the
sides of all the roads thats who is fuelling
Myanmars mobile boom, according to the CEO
of MCC, Myanmars largest private education
service provider.
In the wake of her father U Tin Win Aungs
pioneering success in computer services and
education, Ma Chaw Khin Khin, also known as
Cindy, has become an outspoken advocate for
higher-speed internet for Myanmar and a more
liberal and practical national technology policy.
Myanmar people are hungry for information,
and communications are so important because
under the past government information was
hard to come by.
Cindy says she sees smartphones and mobile
technology as the way people will get their
information in the future.
I think Myanmars mobile penetration is
fuelled by the need to be connected like all the
people in all the little shops by the sides of all
the roads in Myanmar.
Cindy was part of the team from the
Myanmar Computer Federation who hosted

Googles Eric Schmidt when he came to Yangon.

Mobile opens an amazing amount of
possibilities, she said. You cant say Myanmar
is behind 30 or 40 years. The people of Myanmar
have leaped directly to mobile apps.
However, negotiating this new future, many
are unclear on just what it is they are using.
Many of them dont know the difference
between social media and the Internet. You ask
if they use the Internet, they say no. You ask if
they use Facebook, they say yes. In many cases
they dont know the difference.
Already in discussion with Microsoft
about mobile app training, her vision is to
expand what was Myanmars first computer
training centre into a nationwide mobile app
development place a big vision that, like most,
started from something small.
We were the first Myanmar computer training
company, which opened in the downstairs of our
house. We were the first to be a member of MIC
IDC and now we want to be the first to give the
momentum impact in mobile app development
with Myanmar people as a whole. We have the
physical ground presence with all our centres.
Whatever we do we do national. This is a very

big wave of leveraging this mobile opportunity

which leads our country straight to the 21st
century, she said.
Back before the Myanmars mobile revolution
kicked off, the Myanmar Computer Federation
(MCF) played a key role by working with the
government and MPT to create the telecom law
that would lay the groundwork for the mobile
activity today.
The MCF fought so hard to organize
the public and to liberalise the draft
telecommunications law. The first one was
so conservative and we spent our own time
studying it. We wanted to encourage creativity
and we were asking a lot of questions, going
back to the parliament and back to the ministry.
Cindy also fought for liberalisation of the
internet gateway. We need the gateway in
future to be independent. All we ever asked for
was fast connectivity. We knew the gateway
was the problem. We said the right should
be given for the licence owners to have their
own gateway [that is, not routed through
government-monitored controls], she said.
For all their victories, however, growth is
still behind what it could be. Mobile took off

during the last year. The whole gang of us we

were still struggling to grow. We didnt grow
as much as we wanted to in the mobile boom.
We had history unfold before our eyes, but we
were hoping it would be our moment when the
mobile sector opened up.
She said the telecom operators didnt procure
much in the way of equipment or software and
services locally. However, MCC does provide
agency services in upper Myanmar for Telenor.
Speaking during the US ICT Council event
Naypyitaw, she told representatives and chief
information officers that, whether they liked it
or not, more than 50 percent of the population
would be accessing the mobile internet, 80
percent by smartphone.
The least-developed areas of Myanmar
are going to benefit the most and the mobile
operators have done a great job. This opens
up a lot of opportunities for e-learning and
we also want to do a lot of assistance to small
enterprises through mobile, she said.
For more information about an MCF-backed
move to keep internet affordable in Myanmar,
see A4ai.com

17

Q & A with Roson Luo,

country director of
Huawei Device Myanmar
The boss of the biggest smartphone brand in
Myanmar tells us what customers love
Whats your bestselling smart
phone?
Gplay and Gplay mini are the
bestselling smartphones in the
market currently. Another series
is P8 lite, a model which is quite
popular in the smartphone range
because of its design and features.
What are your most expensive and
least expensive smartphones?
The most expensive is the P8
Premium, this years flagship
product, at 5.5 inches. The least
expensive smartphone is the Y336.
How does Huawei approach
the Myanmar marketplace? By
segments? Whats most important?
We have different product lines for
different segments. We produce four
product lines: P series, Mate series, G
series and Y series. Each product line
fits in with each segment, so each
segment is important for us. For the
people who like to use a designated
handset with good camera functions,
we have the P series. For the people
who want to use high-technology
functions on a smartphone, we have
Mate series. For those who want to
use a large screen with cost-effective
smartphones, we have the G series.

to read books. In the meantime,

they prefer to use a large-screen
smartphone not only for video but
also to do multimedia functions. To
fill this need, we provide large-screen
smartphones like Mate7 and G730
last year and P8, G7 Plus this year.
When did Huawei first set up shop
in Myanmar? How has the growth
been since then?
Huawei established our first branded
shop in April 2013 and since then
our market share increased. We have
held the largest market share three
consecutive years.
How many Huawei brand shops
do you have in Myanmar?Any
idea how many total mobile phone
shops sell Huawei phones?
Huawei has nearly 10 Huaweibranded shops in Myanmar. I
cannot give you the exact number
of shops which are selling Huawei
handsets, but I can say it is more
than 2000.
Is Android the only operating
system you use? Why?
Android is not the only OS that
we are using. For example, last
year Huawei cooperated with the

Photo: Supplied

For the entry level, we have the

Y series. We always commit to a
high-quality strategy and continue
to provide good warranty services to
customers and focus on after-sales
service. Thats why Huawei has the
highest market share in Myanmar.
Can you give us any numbers like
how many Huawei phones are
in use in Myanmar today, or how
many are sold per day?
Huawei has rapid growth year-onyear as the smartphone market is
expanding. In the Myanmar market,
Huawei has more than 3 million
smartphones users today.
Do you see a tendency in the
marketplace toward larger video
screens and more video use?What
models do you have to fill that
need?
This is very interesting question. Yes,
wherever we go, we always see the
people are using their smartphones
to play games, to watch video and

Windows system. Huawei also has

tablets that are supporting Windows
systems and they are very popular in
the European market.
Do you have any new models
of tablets and wearable devices
besides smartphones?
Yes, we have. Our pad model T1
and talkband B2 are hot now, but
users still want to see more Huawei
devices. For sure, were going to
launch different pad models in 2016
and the Huawei watch will also
come to Myanmar soon.
Are you confident of continued
growth in the Myanmar
marketplace? Why?
Sure. I am very confident for the
growth of the Myanmar market,
because Myanmar has just recently
opened. Mobile penetration is
increasing, many users will need
handsets and this is the one of the
hightest-potential markets in the
world.
S.A. Becker

From Zawgyis magic to

Unicodes standard reach
How one standard for Myanmar text encoding can
provide foundations for a whole industry
By SA Becker

EVERYBODY knows there is no

one single best way to represent
the varied tones of Myanmar
language using Englishs character
set. Less well-known but
equally problematic, however, is
translating Myanmar language
into digital: that is, agreeing on
ways to depict its characters on
computers and mobile devices, so
that all users are speaking, and
reading, with the same underlying
digital programming language.
There is a solution, however,
according the president of the
Myanmar Computer Federation
who is also managing director
of Myanmar ICT Development
Corporation Ltd, which owns
MICT Park: U Khun Oo says the
government should lead the way
in setting Unicode standards
for the character system that
underlies the Myanmar language
on computers and mobile devices.
And a consistent base is
necessary to support the growth
that ICT can bring to the country.
The development of a strong
local ICT ecosystem for the public
and private sector is the major driver
for Myanmars overall economic
development, U Khun Oo said in an
interview earlier this month.
The government has the goal for
the development of telecom sector
of trying to increase the overall
tele-density of the country from
75 percent to 90pc by 2016 based
on telecommunication services for
the public, with affordable prices in
urban and rural areas, he said.
The competitive
telecommunication environment
was created through the award of
telecoms service licences to two
foreign operators, Telenor and
Ooredoo, as well as the integration
of the governments original
monopoly operator MPT with
KDDI of Japan.
Because of those actions,
Myanmars tele-density was
increased from 9pc in 2012 to
50pc in 2015, he said, adding
the decision to allow Telenor
and Ooredoo 100 percent foreign
ownership was the correct
decision to bring about todays
mobile revolution.
However, as with culture, art
and learning, its also vital that
Myanmar doesnt just import the
worlds tech it needs to bring its
own to the table.
With the rapid increase of
tele-density, one thing important
for Myanmar is to be able to use
applications in Myanmar language
and to create content in Myanmar
language. We need to publish
information that can be read by all
the people throughout the country,
especially for the people in the
rural and remote areas, he said,
adding mobile development is one
of the most important aspects of

Myanmar Computer Federation (MCF) President U Khun Oo. Photo: Zarni Phyo

Myanmars economic growth.

We are talking about not only
mobile phones, but also using
mobile applications. Although
most of our Myanmar mobile
users can use in Myanmar
language, not many Myanmarlanguage applications exist today.
This is a big challenge for our
people to grow smartphone
applications.
Under economic sanctions,
which cut Myanmar and its tech
scene off from global progress,
local computer people developed
the Zawgyi font out of necessity.
Named forEven today, up to 80
percent of Myanmars keyboard
and mobile users rely on the
Zawgyi font.
Zawgyi may share a name with
a magician of Myanmar folktales,
who can cure everything and do
anything, but the trouble is that,
in its modern-day programming
incarnation, the spells dont
work worldwide. Zawgyi is not
Unicode-compatible that is,
not automatically portable to
the internationally recognised
industry standard for consistent
encoding, representation and
handling of text used for most
of the worlds writing systems,
including Myanmar language.
We are trying to convince
the government to use Unicode,
not only in government offices
but anywhere in Myanmar.
Government should push the use
of Unicode.
After decades in ICT, U Khun
Oo became president of the
Myanmar Computer Professionals
Association from 2006 to 2010.
Since 2012, he has served as
president of the Myanmar
Computer Federation (MCF),
which recommends ICT policies
and revisions to laws governing
information and communication
technology.
MCF also includes three other

branches: the Myanmar Computer

Professionals Association, with
11,000 members; the Myanmar
Computer Industrial Association,
with 1000 company members,
and the Myanmar Computer
Enthusiasts Association, with
nearly 100,000 members, mostly
from government and high
schools.
The MCF has opened the
Kanaung Hub Incubation Center in
Building 14 at Yangons MICT Park,
geared specifically to ICT start-ups,
and is also planning to establish a
new ICT City near Yangon.
The building of a Unicode
standard to incubate development
is just as important as physical
workplaces, U Khun Oo says.
This is related to Myanmar
character standardisation, he
said. Im an advocate of Unicode
because it is very important for
Myanmar language development.
The customer has the right to
choose, U Khun Oo said. Zawgyi
was implemented first and quite
a lot of people are currently using
it on mobile. But in the long term
it is impossible to use the Zawgyi
standard because Zawgyi does
not follow the requirement of the
Unicode standard.
U Khun Oo says it is particularly
important for software developers
to be aware of the importance of
developing applications according
to the international and universal
standards.
We cant say nobody can use
Zawgyi. [Instead] we need to
encourage the apps developers to
develop according to a Unicode
standard.
U Khun Oo says he believes
that if e-government systems are
developed according to a Unicode
standard, it will propagate gradually throughout the industry.
I believe we will eventually
move to Unicode, but we may have
to wait a few years.

18

How the IT groundwork was laid

MICT Park paved the way for todays information technology revolution
By SA Becker

Its not his name on the countless

advertising billboards now
blanketing the country, but when
you meet U Thein Oo at his office at
telecoms and tech complex MICT
Park in Yangon, it soon becomes
clear how instrumental he was in
the mobile revolution that an open
telecoms market is now bringing
about.
He also calls the revolution now
unstoppable and essential for the
growth of the country.
I have confidence that in
the future Myanmars socialeconomic development will grow,
whatever government is in place.
Any government has to work for
development using ICT because
there is no other choice, said U
Thein Oo, of Myanmar Information
and Communication Technology
Development Corporation (MICTDC).
We have to make ICT develop
if we want to have national
development. Any good government
needs to make the fundamentals
right: good governance, clean
government, transparency, fair
competition and inclusive decisionmaking. This can happen only with
effective utilization of ICT.
U Thein Oo is acknowledged as one
of the key founders of MICT Park and
presently serves as its chair. He is the
former president of the Myanmar
Computer Federation (MCF).
He also may be one of those
most responsible for todays new
age of telecoms. U Thein Oo was
convinced that to improve telecoms
inside Myanmar would require
more operators competing fairly. To
speed up enactment of the Telecom
Law he organised a forum where
hluttaw and commission members,
government officials and private
sector players participated in an
open discussion on the telecom law
in December 2013.
At the time, the sole telecom
operator was the governments
own Myanma Posts and
Telecommunications (MPT). The
result is what evolved into todays
Myanmar telecom landscape.
Born in 1948, in the village of
Yotayote in Rakhine State, not far
from the state capital Sittwe, U Thein
Oo was an only child whose father
died when he was three. His mother
encouraged him to do well in school.
Rakhine at the time was quite
rich and we had a lot of natural
resources and many well educated
people. We relied on many workers
from other countries.
Just the opposite today, he added.
A young U Thein Oo got sent to
Kyauktaw, followed by Sittwe for
middle school. Reaching eighth
standard he moved to what was then
Rangoon and enrolled in Central
State Model High School in 1962
the same year the military took over
Myanmars government.
After high school he enrolled at
the Institute of Economics in 1965,
then graduated and joined his alma
mater as a tutor in 1970.

One of the founding fathers of Myanmar's technology boom, U Thein Oo, seen here at MICT Park. Photo: Naing Wynn Htoon

At that time most of our teachers

were trained in the US or the UK
and they were really good. The
head of our department studied
at Harvard University and some
from Stanford, Cambridge, Chicago,
Columbia, etc.
But as a sign of how long ago that
was, the price of a hostel was then
K57.
At the request of a teacher who

consultant. It was an early attempt

to look at e-government. By then,
the computer of choice (or necessity)
was an IBM 4381 mainframe.
In 1987 he left UCC and to train
staff on computer use at the UNDPs
Myanmar office. At the same time, he
worked with his friend from Institute
of Economics, Tin Win Aung at the
newly established MCC, and teaching
software engineering to students.

Any government has to work for

development using ICT because
there is no other choice
U Thein Oo
Myanmar Information and
Communication Technology Development Corporation
later became rector of Rangoon
University, in 1971 U Thein Oo to join
the Universities Computer Center
(UCC), the first computer centre
in Myanmar supported by United
Nations Development Programme.
Their first computer was an ICL 1902,
with the batch punch cards.
In 1974 he went to London to train
at International Computer Limited
(ICL) and study management at the
University of Portsmouth. Among the
highlights of his UK experience were
the practical training at ICL training
center, the IBM facilities at Redding
and working in the computer centre
at Barclays Bank.
He returned to Yangon in 1976
and became a senior programmer/
analyst, working on the UCCs PDP
11/70 mini computer.
By 1985, still with the UCC, U
Thein Oo joined the Computing
Development Project (CDP), also a
UNDP-funded project, as a national

In 1992, Thein Oo established his

own business, ACE Data Systems,
in true start-up fashion: with
two computers in his mother-inlaws garage. I developed the first
accounting software in Myanmar
and launched that software in 1993.
Then we moved from the garage into
the city near Sule Pagoda, and we
expanded to about 30 people, he said.
Since 1994, U Thein Oos ACE
Data Systems has been developing
software for almost all leading banks,
insurers, hotels, supermarkets and
manufacturing businesses in the
country.
He also introduced Myanmars
very first ATM machine, in 1996 for
Mayflower Bank, which is no longer
in existence. But in 2011 he got
back to ATMs, bringing them from
Germany.
In 1996, the government passed a
Computer Science Development Law.
U Thein Oo became president of the

Myanmar Computer Professionals

Association (MCPA) and vice
president of the Myanmar Computer
Federation (MCF) in 1998. He became
president of the Myanmar Computer
Federation (MCF) in 2003. He has also
worked on a number of local and
ASEAN committees.
We went to Software Technology
Parks of India [STPI] in Bangalore;
High Tech City, Hyderabad in India;
Software Park in Thailand; and
Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC)
in Malaysia. We realised we need IT
parks and internet services.
In 1999, the first meeting of the
11 founders of MICTDC (Myanmar
ICT Development Corporation) the
entity that would grow into MICT
Park took place in Thein Oos small
office. Government
After completion of phase 1,
senior officials gave their blessing
for further expansion, providing
loans to build new buildings. We
had given back all the loans. Now
the expansion of MICT Park is in
the third phase, with 100 percent
occupancy and a list of clients
waiting to move in. MICTDC
provides concession rates of rent for
Myanmar companies. An Incubation
center, Kanaung Hub, was opened
with the collaboration with MCF.
We still have the fourth phase
to go and we are going to build a
data center. We are also joining a
company we expect will become
fourth telecom operator.
In 2012, he became chair of the
Steering Committee for Computer
Universities (Center of Excellence).
We are accepting only highly
qualified candidates. We cooperate
and collaborate with not only local
ICT industry members such as MCF
and MICTDC but also foreign donors
and educational institutions. The

goal is to produce industry-ready

gradutes, he said.
A teacher at heart, albeit a teacher
of technology and business, U Thein
Oo says the current changes are so
dramatic only because the sector
lagged so far behind for so long, and
through no fault of those working
inside it.
The ICT sector could have been
much more advanced than it is now.
We not only initiated development of
ICT Parks in Yangon, Mandalay and
Cyber City near Pyin Oo Lwin; we
also carried out seven pilot projects
in e-government: e-Visa, e-Passport,
Electronic Data Interchange,
e-Procurement, Smart School, Smart
Card, and Certification Authority.
All of them started in 2000. We also
identified more than 40 priority
projects and prepared three ICT
Master plans; 2001-2005, 20062010, 2011-2015. If we could have
implemented these plans, we would
be well ahead of where we are now.
he said.
He has hopes, however, that the
time may have come at last. With
the e-Government Master Plan now
published with the support of Asian
Development Bank (ADB), he hopes
the government carries it forward.
We have good-enough vision,
mission and even plans. What we
need is the process and structure.
I think that somebody who is
committed and can effectively
coordinate and enforce the
implementation of e-Government
should lead: maybe the president or
at least a vice president.
The nations leaders will have a
lot to tackle in the coming term, but
people like U Thein Oo will make
sure ICT doesnt fall off the radar
not when theyve been working so
long to bring it about.

19

Guaranteed speed
Satellite service provider
BlueWave says the future is here
By SA Becker

AFTER years of slow internet speeds

bottlenecked both by capacity and
by a very cautious government the
election and the mobile revolution
are set to pry open much greater
connectivity in the days to come.
Chief operating officer Clement
Larroque of new ISP player
BlueWave says the company
has ambitious plans to provide
high-speed internet services
to be launched at this weeks
CommuniCast event.
BlueWaves COO says customers
will be offered guaranteed speed.
We are providing to our
customers Internet that Works
anywhere in Myanmar, not
only with guaranteed speed,
but speed that is comfortably
sufficient for a complete streaming
experience, he said. Whether it
is live broadcasting, browsing or
videoconferencing, our customers
now have the same level of service
available in every other country
where we and our partners are
active without any kind of transition
period.
With a formal establishment
of services on November 16, Mr
Larroque says BlueWave online
at www.bluewavenetworks.net is
launching the most up-to-date,
state-of-the-art and future-proof
satellite broadband service in
Myanmar.
With multiple infrastructure
partners and a VSAT offering
focused on corporate users, and an
exclusive partnership with global
satellite giant Eutelsat, BlueWaves
service will offer speeds of up to
10 Mbps to all users throughout
Myanmar, even in rural areas, with
additional unlimited tailor-made

solutions for corporate customers

requiring a specific business-grade
access, he said.
Mr Larroque says BlueWaves
packages will be based on
bandwidth and total monthly usage
requirements.
We have tailored packages
for both retail and corporate
customers, he said. Retail
customers can choose a variety
of packages starting with 1 Mbps
download speeds with up to 1 GB
per month usage and going up to
the platinum package featuring
10 Mbps download speeds with up
to 80 GB per month usage, while
corporate customers can enjoy
packages including unlimited usage
for multiple users.
He says the key idea is to provide
guaranteed levels of service
throughout the Myanmar.
It doesnt matter whether you
are in Mandalay or Myeik, Lashio
or Sittwe, Yangon or Myitkina,
said BlueWaves head of sales Ravi
Shanker.
The constant drops in speed
and outages that were normal even
in high-end hotels all go away.
With our direct, fully managed
connection to our network of
satellite and fiber, our customers
whether corporate or retail enjoy
the guaranteed quality of access
that is finally matched to their
requirements.
BlueWaves partners are SingTel,
Singapores leading phone company,
and Eutelsat as exclusive satellite
partner in Myanmar.
Eutelsat has more than 30 years
of experience and 38 satellites in
orbit. Eutelsat covers about 150
countries located in Europe, Africa,
Asia and the Americas, serving an
audience of more than 274 million
homes with internet, cable and

satellite TV and more than 5700

television channels, said Michel
Azibert, Eutelsats commercial and
development director.
We are proud to deploy our
IP Easy solution for the first time
in Asia and to support BlueWave
in its push to contribute to the
digitisation process in Myanmar
which is critical for social and
economic development, said
Mr Azibert. Our EUTELSAT 70B
satellite offers seamless coverage
of Myanmar and prime positioning
over Southeast Asia. This new
step reflects Eutelsats strategy to
develop satellite broadband in the
Asia-Pacific region on ground, at sea
and in-flight.
New ISP players like BlueWave
are expected to dramatically grow
Myanmars current broadband
internet penetration currently less
than 2 percent.
Currently, Myanmars
international connectivity is
limited to an outdated SEA-ME-WE
3 submarine cable that regularly
suffers technical problems, and
terrestrial fiber cables through
Thailand that get cut regularly and
have limited capacity, BlueWave
COO Mr Larroque said.
The net result has been that,
in most cases, internet is service
is slow and unreliable, even in
downtown Yangon. While mobile
phone networks have filled part
of the gap for lower-bandwidth
and short-time-period internet
usage, for corporate customers and
households seeking a dependable,
high-bandwidth connection to
allow video streaming, the existing
services have been inadequate and
internet via the newly launched
mobile phone networks does not
meet the service levels required,
he said.

Chief Operating Officer Clement Larroque (kneeling down), from left to right:
Myint Mo Soe - Network Engineer, May Thatun - Sales & Marketing Manager, Ravi
Shanker - Head of Sales. Photos: Supplied

How much do you top up?

Htut Oo Aung
and Myo Satt

While our reporters hit the streets expecting to find complaints about the new expense of owning a mobile phone that can access
both data and phone, most we spoke to said they were relieved that the prices were now cheaper than ever. Heres a selection

U Aung Kyaw Naing

55, office worker
I reckon that K5000 would be my
phone bill top-up on a weekly basis.
I dont need to spend a lot on it because my job offered me a personal
phone and an office phone so I dont
think its very expensive, except if
you browse too much internet.

Ma Qi Qi Win
26, cashier

U Han Min Aung

49, Retired

Ma Khin Mar Kyi

31, fruit vendor

Ko Min Min Aung

34, mobile preserved-fruit vendor

My monthly phone bill would be

about K20,000. Although my income
is not very high, I could afford to
buy top-up cards. However, if I use
it a lot on browsing the Web and
regular checks on Facebook, then of
course the balance gets low. Anyway,
it is cheaper than before.

Since I am retired, I dont have

many things to do with my phone,
so I think my phone bill will be
about K5000 every two weeks. I
would mostly use it to call my
friends and family, but I try to keep
it within my budget level so I dont
have pay a lot for it.

I spend K3000 per month on topups. I rarely use it for both calling
and internet. So the costs seem okay
for me but for some who go through
a lot in one month, they may find it
expensive.

Usually I buy K3000 top-up cards

but sometime I use K1000 cards. I
spend between K10,000 and K15,000
in a month. Thats quite expensive
for people like me. I barely use internet. The main reason it costs that
much is that I call my relatives and
friends from my village every day.

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