
Myanmar was off the grid for decades, is catching up fast - williswee
https://www.techinasia.com/myanmar-internet-revolution-startups
======
dharma1
I've run a tech startup in Myanmar for 3 years, and it's true. Facebook is
literally synonymous with Internet for many users, and the web gets a lot less
use.

Most of the cell towers and infrastructure has been built in 2 years - it's
been incredibly fast. Once the telco licenses were awarded, the two telcos
(Ooredoo and Telenor) didn't waste any time revving up ops.

Together with Android devices falling rapidly in price, it has been a complete
transformation in connectivity.

There are some really positive outcomes, like a group of CS students in Yangon
being able to follow Harvard CS MOOC's, and a lot of people working as devs
being able to learn from stackoverflow etc. Internet connectivity will empower
people to educate themselves but it will take some time.

In terms of commercial opportunities for tech companies, I'm not sure they
exist in the scale the article depicts. There are between 50 and 60 million
people, but most of the population live in the countryside, with very little
spending power. The total market size for internet connected people with some
(not very much) spending power is probably around 10 million.

The main challenges are with governance, and physical infrastructure, which
are decades behind where they need to be for a functional country, and these
are things internet connectivity unfortunately can't fix.

~~~
williswee
thanks sharing. what are some opportunities u see there?

~~~
dharma1
Happy to have a conversation - ping me at info@myanmarplus.net

------
quanticle
I think the headline does a poor job of capturing the content of the article.
The real story here is summed up by the graph that shows Myanmar's cell phone
penetration going from 12.8% to 60.7% in the span of _two years_. That's just
insane, even taking into account how fast cell phones have spread in other
countries.

Of course, Facebook is well positioned to take advantage of this, given that
it is well adapted to mobile. But so are others, and there's no reason to
think that Facebook's monopoly will be permanent. Facebook has the advantage
of being the first entrant in an entirely new market, and they have the
branding muscle and name recognition to enforce a temporary monopoly. Long
term, though (as the article itself acknowledges by pointing to the prevalence
of Viber), there is no reason to believe that Facebook's will have a
sustainable monopoly over Burmese cell phone users. If something else comes
along that handles the use cases that Facebook does, but even better, then
people will switch to that.

~~~
yla92
I am a Burmese(Myanmar) guy living in the country. I could say that majority
of the people use Facebook when they use the Internet. One of the thing that
has been bothering me is that Facebook is cooperating with one of the local
telco (Telenor) and did a program called Facebook zero[0] where the users of
the aforementioned telco can use the Facebook freely. It is good and bad, I
would say. Users would love it, no doubt but I don't want to see that Facebook
is dominating the market and there won't be any other advantages to others,
even to local startups.

[0] : [https://www.telenor.com.mm/pages/facebook-
zero/164](https://www.telenor.com.mm/pages/facebook-zero/164)

~~~
_nedR
Yes. Facebook has been trying to get telcos to foist this on us Indians as
well. It has kinda blown up into a big debate about net neutrality in the
country. Here is the latest hn article on it :
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10931750](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10931750)

------
yeldarb
I just got back from 2 weeks in Myanmar and it's a fascinating country.

I was very surprised that many of the Buddhist monks you see walking around
carry smart-phones and tablets! It threw me for a loop when I saw a monk
inside a pagoda playing Candy Crush on his iPad.

Edit: one of the monks on his iPad
[http://s11.postimg.org/y473yqjk3/12486068_10205302771587155_...](http://s11.postimg.org/y473yqjk3/12486068_10205302771587155_4597910328568174882_o.jpg)

~~~
dman
Do you happen to have an itinerary you could share? I have been planning to
visit for a while.

~~~
yeldarb
Here's what I did: Flew into Yangon via Bangkok and got my bearings. Then I
took an overnight bus (~11 hours I believe) to Bagan and stayed there motor
biking around the temples for a few days. From there I took day-bus to Inle
Lake (~8 hours). If I would have had more time I would have stopped at Kalau
to do the popular 3-day trek to Inle Lake instead. I stayed there for a couple
of days (boat rides, bike rides, enjoying the scenery). And then from there I
went to Mandalay (not much to see in the town proper but lots of good day
trips). And flew back to Bangkok from Mandalay.

It's more expensive than a lot of the rest of Southeast Asia but I still
managed on less than $50/day (staying in hostel dorms).

~~~
dman
Thanks!

------
tristanj
Related discussion from a couple months ago: Millions of Facebook users have
no idea they're using the Internet.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9995043](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9995043)

------
Nutmog
“Worryingly for digital publishers, there’s a trend towards ‘Facebook
prosecutions’ – several people have been jailed in the past few months over
what they have allegedly posted, or even shared, on the site.”

Doesn't that just mean it's becoming like every other country? Even America
has those. Perhaps the internet is bound to end up controlled by laws just
like the real world.

~~~
anonbanker
I regularly (once a month or more) deal with substitutional service orders in
the Master's chambers. I have had Kik, Facebook, Snapchat, and even XMPP used
as sufficient service.

All you have to do is prove you failed at attempts to contact via traditional
methods, which isn't too hard.

My take on the internet is that it is an invention of DARPA, a military
organization. That makes everything you say/do on it public, even if
(temporarily) obfuscated by encryption schemes. Don't like it? roll your own
BATMAN mesh network. Otherwise, sit up straight when you're being watched.

------
conorh
My wife is in Myanmar at the moment, in a place called Taunggyi, she was there
a few years ago too and it is amazing the change. Now she can reliably
Facetime from there to the east coast of the US, whereas a few years ago she
couldn't even get internet!

~~~
yla92
Taunggyi is a lovely place and it's one of the cleanest (and large) city in
the country. There are a small town near Taunggyi called 'Kalaw' and it's be
great if she could spend sometime there too. It's such a nice weather right
now, too.

The change is very quick as you mentioned. The SIM cards became so cheap and
the speed became much faster than before. So, even to local people like us,
it's amazing.

------
dang
We changed the title from "In Myanmar, Facebook is the internet" to that of
the article.

Submitters: please follow the HN guidelines, which ask you to use the original
title except when it is misleading or linkbait.

