O’Brien’s bid for Burma licence fails

Media and telecom owner Denis O’Brien has failed in his bid to secure a telecommunications licence in Burma, with Norway’s Telenor and Qatar’s Ooredoo being granted the rights to develop the south-east Asian country’s mobile network.

Mr O’Brien recently described Burma as being one of the most exciting market opportunities, for telecoms, on the planet.

Via his Digicel business — which targets developing economies — he had teamed up with billionaire investor George Soros and Burmese businessman, Serge Pun in a consortium to bid for one of the two sought-after licences.

It was recently reported that the Digicel consortium invested about $31m on its Burmese bid.

In a brief statement, yesterday, Mr O’Brien speaking on behalf of the consortium expressed disappointment over the decision, but thanked the Burmese government for the opportunity to be involved in the bidding process and congratulated the successful applicants.

However, the statement added that Digicel which has built up a leading presence in 30 developing economies in the past 12 years is still interested in pursuing opportunities in Burma.

“Digicel remains committed to exploring commercial opportunities in Myanmar, and will be evaluating these on an ongoing basis,” it said.

Digicel had its pre-qualification application — lodged in April — accepted and had made the final tender process.

Burma/Myanmar has an economy growing at a rate of more than 5% per year, but mobile phone penetration of below 10%; less than many other emerging economies.

Plans are in place, however, to boost telecommunications coverage to up to 80% of the country in the next three years.

However, the most high profile bidder — a joint approach by Vodafone and China Mobile — withdrew its interest at the end of last month, claiming the likely financial return on its planned investment wouldn’t justify its interest.