Ooredoo may make its services cheaper to prevent an incoming competitor from taking its customers, the head of its Myanmar operation has said.
The Qatar-based company is ready to do “whatever it takes” when Myanmar’s fourth telco operator enters the market later this year, Ooredoo’s CEO for Myanmar, Rene Meza, told Myanmar Business Today.
A joint venture between local firms and Vietnam’s Viettel is due to start selling SIM cards this year, fuelling fiercer competition in the country’s young telecoms sector.
Both customers and the government will benefit from a more competitive market, said Rene Meza, who has been at the helm of the company’s Myanmar operation since August 2015.
“We’re ready for competition and we’ve been preparing for this new player for a long, long time now,” said Meza. “If we have to do whatever it takes to retain customers and remain competitive as a player, we’ll do it.”
“If that comes in the form of us having to further reduce our already low prices, we’ll do so… That’s what competition is all about,” he said.
The Viettel-backed joint venture, Myanmar’s fourth-and final-player, will become the country’s second Myanmar majority owned telco operator with Myanmar National Telecom Holding Public Limited and Star High Public Company Limited holding a 51 percent stake. Viettel Global, Viettel’s investment arm, will hold the rest.
The joint venture announced in January it will invest $2 billion in Myanmar’s telecoms sector and aims to cover 95 percent of the population by 2020.
The government first outlined its plans for a fourth operator back when Ooredoo was bidding for the country’s second license, at the beginning of telecoms liberalization’s in 2013, said Meza, adding, “It comes as no surprise.”
But what remains in the dark for telecoms operators is how exactly the impending 1800 megahertz spectrum allocation, which will enable greater 4G coverage, will be allocated, said Meza.
With the government’s proposed spectrum allocation date of March fast approaching, negotiations between telecoms operators are still ongoing, said a government official.
“We will offer equal chances to all four operators for the 1800 megahertz spectrum, hopefully in March,” said U Myo Swe, deputy director general of the Posts and Telecommunication Department.
With the government looking at distributing spectrum amongst all four operators there shouldn’t be any need for a bidding process, which has been the favoured route by the government, said Meza.
Myanmar is well placed to learn off the mistakes of other countries, where high prices for spectrum discouraged operators and hindered economic development, added Meza.
But U Myo Swe says that the price of spectrum comes down to a lack of fibre and wireless infrastructure in Myanmar, which other countries have at their disposal when providing spectrum.
“We are in the negotiation process and we’re trying to arrive on a reasonable price with the operators.” he said.
Source: Myanmar Business Today
