Smartphones Bring Happiness And Headaches To Myanmar

By Lauren Leatherby

The number of mobile subscribers in Myanmar has quickly grown in a short five years from a mere 500,000 to more than 22 million — giving Burmese a crash course in all the benefits and challenges new technology can bring.

Myanmar's low electrification rates, recurring power outages and poor Internet infrastructure mean that this growth in smartphones has introduced many of the country's 53 million residents to the Web.

"Last year at this time, having a smartphone was a social status," says Phyu Hninn Nyein, knowledge and social impact manager at Proximity Designs in Yangon. Proximity Designs is a social enterprise organization that designs products and services for families in rural Myanmar. "A person who owned a smartphone would show it off by always holding it.

Now, it's a given that there's at least one smartphone in every household. Some households even have more."

In 2009, under control of the military government, SIM cards in Myanmar cost as much as $2,000. At that time, just 1 percent of Myanmar's population had cellphones — the lowest level of cellphone proliferation worldwide outside North Korea, according to World Bank development indicators.

Even as recently as 2013, SIM cards still cost $250, more than most locals could afford.

The average salary in Myanmar is less than $200 a month.

Read more: http://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2015/09/14/424701548/smartphones-bring-happiness-and-headaches-to-myanmar

They might be smartphones but as far as I know Myanmar telecoms only have voice capability, not data. The people I know all connect to the Chinese networks for internet access etc. Mind you this is in the North not in Yangon.

They might be smartphones but as far as I know Myanmar telecoms only have voice capability, not data. The people I know all connect to the Chinese networks for internet access etc. Mind you this is in the North not in Yangon.

I suppose they can get onto the Thai networks in border areas too, making Thai SIM cards an option.

I wonder if they have to register?