Norwegian mobile carrier Telenor Myanmar held a one year anniversary celebration for its monthly event Net Monday recently.
Speakers from nine previous Net Monday partners participated in the event, which was held in People’s Park in Yangon.
The partner representatives included Wikipedia, Huawei, Samsung, HTC, myjobs.com.mm and jobsinmyanmar.com.
Net Monday is Telenor’s initiative to promote its “Internet for All” and opportunities enabled by mobile connectivity. So far there have been Net Monday events in Yangon, Mandalay, Magwe and Bago, following Telenor’s mobile rollout areas. This has included special Net Monday events at Dagon University, Mandalay University, Bago University, Magwe University and Mhawbi Technological University.
“We believe that mobile connectivity is essential for everyone and with the mobile internet comes opportunities to develop both the communities in which you live and your personal life. To provide internet for all in Myanmar, we continue to develop our connectivity around the country step by step,” said Petter Furberg, CEO of Telenor Myanmar.
“… we launched in Yangon with 348 towers in October 2014, but now we have grown to 625 towers. We have over 1,600 towers around the country as of today and we expect to have between 3,000 and 4,000 towers by the end of this year.”
He also told the audience that while Telenor is providing both 2G and 3G network, one third of the mobile phone users in Myanmar are still 2G users.
“The number of 3G users is very high but 2G is still very relevant for the mass market we are here to serve. We will continue to expand our whole network and bring more customers from 2G to 3G by increasing our 3G network and improving the internet speed. We are also continuing to evaluate 4G, which depends on the growth of 4G handsets, and which will require more spectrum being released from the government,” said Furberg.
Sharad Mehrotra, CMO of Telenor Myanmar, said: “Our two internet speeds, MY and SMART, are meeting the demands of the mass market. Good connectivity demands great and local content – we are focusing on working with talented local partners for basic value added services (VAS) whilst also leveraging on our global Telenor partnerships with digital giants such as Facebook, Google and Wikipedia.”
During a question and answer session with the Net Monday partners, the audience discussed internet content and its importance; how software and hardware companies can work closer; and internet safety and responsible user interaction.
One of the panellists, U Moe Kyaw, pointed out that most of the internet users in Myanmar can be expressive on website comment sections, but they have a tendency to blindly trust any content on the internet, and that can be worrisome. “It is always better to double check the content you are reading is credible and trustworthy before sharing it to more users.”
