Myanmar to install more mobile phone lines within 5 years ******

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YANGON, Apr 23 (Xinhua): Myanmar Posts and Telecommunications will extend installation of 30 million more lines of GSM mobile phone through a five-year plan in cooperation with private companies, the official daily New Light of Myanmar reported Saturday. Aimed at developing communications and information technology of the nation and ensuring high living standard as well as natural disaster preparedness measures, Minister of Communications, Posts and Telegraphs U Thein Tun revealed that the ministry will install more telephone lines yearly, increasing 5.0 per cent in telephone density of the whole country at the meeting of Special Projects Implementation Committee at the President's Office in Nay Pyi Taw Friday. He also disclosed to set up the state owned communication satellite with the aim of enhancing the communications and information sectors and ensuring acquisition and dissemination of space technology. The GSM mobile phone lines will be extended step by step installing 4.0 million in the first project year followed by five million lines, six million lines, seven million lines, and eight million lines. According to the official statistics, there are over 1.09 million auto-telephones and 2.10 million mobile phones in Myanmar totaling 3.19 million at present compared with 74,855 in 1988, adding that telephone density hit 5.40 per cent in the entire nation with 30 per cent in Yangon and 20 per cent in Mandalay. There remains lesser density in rural areas and efforts are being made for installation of cellular, CDMA-450, CDMA-800 and GSM phones for the increase of the telephone density, better facility and wider coverage of telephone in the rural areas. Internet users in March 2011 reached 380,000, up 28,610 compared with the same period of 2010's in the country.