The Irrawaddy Towers Asset Holding (ITAH), one of the largest cellular tower owners and operators in Myanmar, has signed an agreement with Vietnam-based FPT to work on potential cellular tower projects in the Southeast Asian country.
FPT, one of Vietnam’s leading ICT corporation, signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with ITAH to mark the initiation of its telecommunication activities in Myanmar’s lucrative market, the firm said.
According to the deal, ITAH and FPT will form a commercial partnership where FPT will assist in building and rolling out ITAH tower networks – both for the existing ITAH rollout of about 2,000 cellular towers and future towers that ITAH may build.
Duong Dung Trieu, FPT Executive Vice President, said, “With FPT’s experience in telecommunication services in Vietnam and other Asian countries, this cooperation will contribute to the development of this sector in Myanmar. We hope this will be the first step to making FPT a significant local player in Myanmar.”
ITAH said the firm will work together with FPT in an effort to form a broad EPC relationship that will allow FPT to take on a considerable portion of the tower building, including importing required materials, equipment and labour, performing local construction, acting as a general contractor supervising local subcontractors and training local subcontractors, among others.
Charbel M Abou–Jaouds, chairman of Alcazar Capital Ltd, which is the main investor in ITAH, said, “We hope to successfully build and maintain cellular towers with infrastructural and technical help from FPT to provide telecoms services in Myanmar’s greenfield market.”
