Digitalizing Myanmar: Connectivity Developments in Political Transitions – Andrea Calderaro connectivity agenda. The challenges facing the on-going connectivity plan in Myanmar can be grouped into two major categories: developing connectivity infrastructure and developing connectivity policy. Infrastructure Implementations Building Mobile Towers: Land Ownership, Landmines, and War Zones With its 676,000 square kilometers, Myanmar is one of the largest countries in South East Asia, second only to Indonesia. Only approximately seven million of its approximately sixty million inhabitants live in the three major cities—the capital Nay Pyi Taw, Yangon, and Mandalay. Developing telecom infrastructure in the wide rural territory of the country would thus have a significant impact on connecting a large portion of Myanmar’s population. In order to fully connect Myanmar, an estimated eighty thousand mobile towers must be built. 30 As Ooredoo and Telenor did not agree to share mobile towers, eighty thousand towers will be built by each company, raising the estimated final number of mobile towers to be built to 160,000. In Myanmar, land ownership is not rigorously tracked by the government, and land owners cannot provide evidence of their ownership of the land. According to the new telecom law, the government is in charge of mediating between mobile tower builders and land owners in order to release mobile infrastructure building licences. The lack of documentation surrounding land ownership will seriously hamper the government’s ability to release mobile tower construction licenses. This will delay connectivity development in rural areas. Moreover, there are landmines throughout a significant portion of Myanmar’s territory. Although clean-up campaigns have been launched, these territories are not yet secure and are therefore excluded from the connectivity plans of both Ooredoo and Telenor. 30 Figures gathered from interviews conducted in February 2014 with CEOs of Telenor and Ooredoo. 18