Follow-up note: Patricia Curran Annex 26 Follow-up note: Nay Lin Soe Annex 27 Follow-up note: Thant Thaw Kuang Annex 28 Follow-up note: Vicky Bowman Annex 29 1. Synthesis The telecommunications sector in Myanmar was in a nascent stage at the time of conception of this project. 1 Before liberalization there were only two mobile cellular subscriptions per 100 individuals as recently as 2012 . The liberalization of the market in 2013 has been followed by significant growth in the sector to date; this is th reflected in the telecommunications affordability, access and use indicators. Myanmar ranked 140 out of 175 in the ITU’s ICT development index, four places ahead of Lao PDR and ahead of both Bangladesh and Pakistan. It is within striking distance of India. The objective of this project was to catalyse Myanmar’s movement towards becoming an inclusive, networked economy that was making advancements on both social and economic fronts. LIRNEasia focused on taking an all-fronts approach in this endeavour. It focuses on addressing, the four elements in the Internet ecosystem in a single project: infrastructure enabling affordable connectivity services, skilled users, low cost and user-friendly devices, and attractive content and applications. The expected outcome of this combined, all-fronts approach is that it increases Internet subscriptions and users per 100 to a level above that of its comparator countries. The project consists of three kinds of activities: research, capacity building, and policy advocacy. LIRNEasia looks to facilitate evidence based policy making. Much of the core evidence required for policy intervention is to stem from quantitative and qualitative research carried out by the organization. It conducted two nationally representative household and individual ICT use surveys in 2015 and 2016. The survey conducted 2 in 2015 under the previous project/research cycle was the first nationally representative ICT use survey to be carried out in the country. In both years, dissemination events and meetings were held in Yangon and Nay Pyi Taw to share the findings with policy makers – including the relevant Union Deputy Minister, private sector, civil society organizations and the media. The two surveys are key parts of the impact assessment of mobile phones that LIRNEasia is conducting. The results from the baseline survey gave rise to a series of questions related to gender disparities in ICT access. A joint qualitative study with the Connected Women programme of the GSM Association (GSMA, the industry body representing mobile operators world wide) was undertaken (with majority of funds coming from GSMA, while all research was conducted by LIRNEasia). The resulting report was completed in time for the Mobile World Congress in February 2016, and officially launched in Yangon in April 2016. Qualitative research was also conducted on the use of free and subsidized data packages in Myanmar, with co-funding from Mozilla and the Google Fellowship programme. The first round of broadband quality of service experience (BB QoSE) testing took place in May 2016 in collaboration with M-Lab (Measurement Lab, a consortium founded by the New America Foundation’s Open Technology Institute). The results were disseminated to the three operators through a series of face-to-face meetings in June 2016. The second focus of action in this project is capacity building, firstly targeting MIDO (a named partner institution in this project) so that they are able to become a financially independent, evidence-based research and advocacy 1 2 http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/IT.CEL.SETS.P2 IDRC project number: 107077-001: Inclusion in the information society in Asia