Digitalizing Myanmar: Connectivity Developments in Political Transitions – Andrea Calderaro called for easier land assignment processes for tower construction. Land assignment for the construction of mobile towers is a key factor in overcoming geographical barriers and extending network coverage, especially in rural areas. As discussed in more detail below, this is one of the major challenges that both the government and mobile operators will face in the coming months. In particular, mobile tower builders demanded a feasible plan for the smooth assignment of land which takes into account the lack of a national register of land property. In addition to the fact that armed conflicts and landmines affect a significant portion of the territory, the issue of physical infrastructure might constitute a major challenge for the tower building process. It runs the risk of seriously slowing the development of connectivity infrastructure. Concerning the proposed telecom law, companies came to a general agreement on the rules already included in the law, with only minor comments and recommendations. Similar to industry stakeholders, foreign governments, namely the United States, welcomed the telecom law and the transparent process of the open consultation. In a concise report, the United States government supports most of the points included in law, and encourages to Myanmar take further initiative to enhance transparent and open national telecom market competition.23 In contrast, civil society and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) disagreed on some points of the draft law. Groups within this sector indicate that the law primarily pleases international investors, establishing obstacles for the development of bottom-up local services by defining entry market conditions more easily met by big international companies but not by local investors. In particular, civil society raised concerns that the law provides parties able to offer infrastructure and hardware network platform, defined as Network Facilities Service, the ability to automatically receive licenses to provide downstream services. Stakeholders have expressed concern that local investors are hardly in the position to offer Network 23 U.S. Government, 2013. “Comments on Telecom Law from U.S. Government”. Available at: http://03861b4.netsolhost.com/Nov2013/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/19-US-Govt-comments.pdf 14