When a SIM Card Goes From $2,000 to $1.50

Five years ago, buying a cell phone SIM card in Myanmar could set you back more than $2,000. It was an extravagance available only to the rich and well-connected—and even they couldn’t buy good reception. At the time, the country was just beginning to emerge from decades of isolation imposed by its military dictatorship. Only North Korea had fewer cell phones per capita.

As the former Burma shifted to a nominally civilian government, its monopolistic state-owned carrier, Myanmar Post and Telecommunications (MPT), knocked down SIM card prices, to $250 by last year. But that was still a fortune in Myanmar, where the average annual income was and is less than $200, and service remained poor. The government, which says its goal is for 74 percent of the country to have access to cell service by 2016 (the current figure is about 12 percent), began last year to seek bids from foreign investors willing to shoulder some of the costs. The state received a massive outpouring of interest from businesses seeking entry into one of Asia’s last mobile frontiers and its 51 million potential wireless customers.