Pagoda and Telecom tower in Yangon, Myanmar | Image: Artem Frolov

The number of mobile phone users in Myanmar is expected to reach 80 percent of the country’s population during the fiscal year 2015-16, according to the Ministry of Telecommunications and Information Technology.

Myanmar’s mobile phone penetration reached 10 percent of the population in 2012-13 while 2013/2014 saw a penetration of 27 percent. The penetration for 2014/2015 is expected to reach 50 percent and continue its growth to 80 percent 2015/2016, according to data from the Ministry of Telecommunications and Information Technology.

“We are working to boost our telecoms service in the country. The government is working together with local and foreign companies to meet that goal in the year 2015-16, which is the last year of the project,” a ministry official told Eleven Myanmar.

Myanmar Post and Telecommunications (MPT) said it sold four million handsets in 2013/2014 and expected it would sell 14 million mobile phones by the year 2015-16.

Myanmar Posts and Telecommunications (MPT), under the Ministry of Communications and Information technology, was for a long time the sole operator of communications services in Myanmar. Now, the ministry has awarded license agreements with two foreign telecom companies, Telenor and Ooredoo allowing those services to be run by both local and foreign telecom companies.

Ooredoo will launch service on 4G LTE, moreover, the company has plans to manufacture and sell mobile handsets in Myanmar. Telenor will provide 2G and 3G networks and use HSPA and LTE technologies to install mobile networks. The two companies have temporarily assigned call charges of K 25 (U$ 0.025) per minute and will sell SIM cards at K1,500 (U$ 1.52) each.

The Ministry of Communications and Information Technology is also planning to give out a license to Yatanarpon Public Company to run communication services across the nation.