Myanmar is the Hottest New Telecom Market on the Planet

Myanmar in 2013 already has emerged as the hottest new telecom market on the planet. Mobile penetration in the country of 60 million is estimated to be a meager five percent to 10 percent.

Myanmar says it has gotten statements of interest from 91 companies interested in one of two initial new communications licenses to be issued by Myanmar.

The new national licenses do not appear to specify which network technologies can be used to build the new networks. But most observers would tend to agree that mobile will be the only logical way to build new networks from scratch, and that Long Term Evolution 4G mobile networks will be the choice.

It appears that a total of four licenses will ultimately be issued, two to domestic firms and two to foreign firms.

Myanmar, where nine percent of the population has a mobile phone, wants to boost telecom communication availablitiy to as much as 80 percent of the country by 2016.

Myanmar is among the countries in Asia with the least availability of communications services. Cambodia has a services penetration rate of 70 percent, Laos 87 percent and Thailand more than 100 percent.