{"id":48457,"date":"2013-10-28T10:34:29","date_gmt":"2013-10-28T08:34:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=48457"},"modified":"2013-10-28T10:35:36","modified_gmt":"2013-10-28T08:35:36","slug":"mtn-not-back-in-myanmar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/mobile\/48457\/mtn-not-back-in-myanmar\/","title":{"rendered":"MTN not back in Myanmar"},"content":{"rendered":"

MTN<\/a>\u00a0Group \u00a0says it is not one of the the major operators reportedly back in\u00a0Myanmar looking to hook up with\u00a0state-owned operator, Myanmar Posts and Telecom (MPT).<\/p>\n

The Financial Times reported that\u00a0SingTel, Vodafone and Orange are among a group of large operators to be invited\u00a0by the government to pitch \u00a0for a joint venture with MPT.<\/p>\n

In June, MTN missed out on one of the two\u00a0nationwide telecommunications licence in Myanmar, with\u00a0Norwegian operator Telenor, and Qatari firm Qtel (Ooredoo) the successful applicants.<\/p>\n

Eleven foreign companies were short-listed in their bid to supply telecommunications infrastructure in Burma, also known as Myanmar.<\/p>\n

These included: Singapore Telecommunications,\u00a0KDDI Corp<\/a>,\u00a0Digicel<\/a>, Axiata,\u00a0Bharti Airtel<\/a>,\u00a0MTN<\/a>, Vietnam\u2019s Viettel,\u00a0Orange<\/a>\u00a0and Millicom International Cellular.<\/p>\n

Myanmar is one of the world\u2019s last telecoms frontiers, with only 9% of its 60 million people, at most, having mobile phones.<\/p>\n

But faced with big investments and uncertain returns, some bidders dropped out of the auction including \u00a0Vodafone Group<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0China Mobile<\/a>\u00a0who said it did not meet their \u201cinternal investment criteria\u201d.<\/p>\n

The Financial Times reported that\u00a0MPT was in talks with operators in Singapore as well as Japan and some other Western countries.<\/p>\n

However, when BusinessTech asked MTN if they were part of the group of companies pitching in Myanmar,\u00a0Nik Kershaw, executive investor relations at MTN, said that the\u00a0government\u00a0was looking for minority stake investors of between 30%-40%.<\/p>\n

“We are an operator, we\u00a0aren’t\u00a0back in Myanmar,”\u00a0Kershaw said.<\/p>\n

More on\u00a0Myanmar telecoms<\/h3>\n

MTN misses out on Myanmar licence<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Major consortium drops out of Myanmar race<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

MTN talks up Myanmar prospects<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Telecom\u2019s hottest property<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MTN Group says it is not one of the the major operators reportedly back in Myanmar looking to hook up with state-owned operator Myanmar Posts and Telecom (MPT).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":36017,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1660,1874,5118,26,6164,28,653,5751],"class_list":["post-48457","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mobile","tag-bharti-airtel","tag-china-mobile","tag-digicel","tag-headline","tag-kddi-corp","tag-mtn","tag-orange","tag-vodafone-group"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48457","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48457"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48457\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48465,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48457\/revisions\/48465"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36017"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}