Vodafone Group PLC, China Mobile Ltd (中國移動) and an investment fund linked to billionaire investor George Soros are among 22 bidders vying to enter Myanmar, one of the world’s last unexplored mobile telephone frontiers.
Foreign giants are lining up in the hope of doing business in the former army-ruled country, where less than 10 percent of the population has access to a telephone — a figure its government hopes to boost to 80 percent by 2016.
“Our telecoms sector has been so outdated,” Burmese Deputy Minister of National Planning and Economic Development Set Aung said. “We can’t rely on small companies, so we decided to work with internationally known and experienced companies.”
Twenty-two companies and consortiums submitted applications ahead of Thursday’s deadline and would be vetted for inclusion in the tender process, Set Aung said.
Vodafone and China Mobile announced that they were teaming up to bid for one of two licenses on offer to build, own and operate a nationwide mobile network for an initial term of 15 years.
Myanmar’s communications sector is poised for a “rapid” expansion as the government doubles the number of mobile operators and encourages the development of a nationwide mobile network, the companies said in a joint statement.
Quantum Strategic Partners, whose principal investment adviser is Soros Fund Management, has joined forces with telecoms provider Digicel Group Ltd and YSH Finance, a newly established holding company, to enter the fray.
“It’s quite a big opportunity,” Digicel spokeswoman Antonia Graham said. “We are looking at an initial project investment of between US$1.5 billion and US$2 billion.”
Other companies that have expressed an interest include Japan’s KDDI Corp, Qatar Telecom QSC, Orange PLC and Singapore Telecommunications Ltd, according to a source close to the process.
The government is expected to announce on Thursday which firms have pre-qualified. A final decision on the winning bidders is expected on June 27.
State-owned giant Myanmar Post and Telecommunications announced on Thursday that it would start selling SIM cards for less than US$2.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the