Availability of cheap mobile to hasten Burma’s emergence from isolation

Just over a year ago in one of the world’s least-connected countries, I tried to buy a Sim card for my mobile phone. Through a series of middle-men – or middle- women in my case – I got my card along with files and photos of the former owners, which felt like I was buying a car and its history and not a microchipped piece of plastic.

I was charged Kyat 280,000 or €220 and presented with the coveted card, which has functioned reasonably well despite limited connectivity, dropped calls, and, inevitably, many wrong number calls, no doubt to the former owners.

Soon after my investment, a taxi driver laughed when he heard how much I’d paid for mine. He paid €157, hardly a bargain when you consider the average monthly salary in Rangoon is €100 per month.

A former NGO who came here in 2009 had to pay €1,350 for her Sim card back when a mobile phone was the ultimate status symbol here and communication was cynically controlled.

The black market for mobile Sim cards disappeared dramatically in August when Ooredoo cards became available in Rangoon, Mandalay and Nay Pyi Taw (Burma's new capital) for €1.20. The affordability of personal communication has suddenly been placed in the pockets of everyone and mobile phones will rapidly become an everyday commodity.

Revolution

It is nothing short of a revolution in a country that is emerging from a half-century of isolation and is one of the world’s last frontier telecom markets. The two main providers, successful in their bids to provide nationwide coverage, are Norway-based Telenor and Qatar-based Ooredoo. Denis O’Brien’s Digicel consortium was also a contender, and while not chosen, remains active on the ground here constructing and leasing cell towers.

The competition for a mobile service provision in Myanmar is a three-horse race, which also includes Myanmar Posts and Telecommunications (MPT). MPT, the incumbent state-run provider, established and monopolised the first service and is currently relaunching itself along with two Japanese partners.

It already has a skeletal network that covers the three major cities. However, outside of the cities there is virtually no coverage. This is one of the many challenges that face all three companies, and in particular Telenor and Ooredoo. Land acquisition and tower construction will be difficult in a country that lacks decent roads, credible infrastructure or clear land ownership. But competition between the three should ensure that customers will ultimately benefit. Already MPT has reduced the price of its cards to the same as Ooredoo.

Ooredoo stole a march on its competitors by being the first to issue cards in August at a universally affordable price. Telenor has just followed suit, announcing a phased availability of Sims in the major cities between now and mid-October.

Ooredoo’s advertising has been ubiquitous in characteristic red and white colours. Every downtown billboard has been blitzed with cheesy adverts of youngsters in traditional and western dress narcissistically taking selfies.

All three companies will be busy meeting agreed targets over the next year. It’s expected that from the current very scant coverage, teledensity will be somewhere in the region of 80 per cent by the end of 2016 .

The benefits of mobile phone access – and most packages come with internet access also – will be enormous, particularly in isolated rural communities, where Burma remains caught up in pencil- and-ledger processes and sporadic electricity, if at all.

Money transfers

Phone-owners will eventually have access to banking and money transfers for the first time, weather forecasts and practical updates on agriculture. Healthcare can also be managed: a simple SMS text can serve a reminder for a child’s vaccination, saving long and unnecessary journeys often on foot.

Connecting people will help liberate isolated communities economically as well as socially, especially in the lead-up to elections in late 2015, and hopefully will give people more control over their lives and future prosperity.

The current lack of connectivity and rural isolation might go some way to explaining the provisional census figures just released. The 2014 census, Burma’s first in over 30 years, has surprised everyone with its shortfall of nine million people when compared with the government’s long-standing estimate of a national population of 60 million.

The figure is now estimated at 51.4 million. There are many reasons for this shortfall being discussed in the press, but I have a hunch Burma’s population was mistakenly pitched as similar to the UK, its former coloniser, and this for a country the size of the UK and France together.

Either way, it’s a lot fewer mobile phone customers to cater for, but is still a daunting population to connect.