Ooredoo Myanmar, the third largest mobile operator in the country, is upgrading its 4G network and expanding coverage to 200 cities and towns to reach nearly 30 per cent of the population by the end of the year.

The operator said the upgrade is using a combination of carrier aggregation, 4×4 MIMO, 256 QAM and License Assisted Access (LAA) technology to boost theoretical peak download speeds to 500Mb/s at selected locations by early 2018.

Vikram Sinha, CEO of Ooredoo Myanmar (pictured), claimed the peak speed of its 4G Pro network will be three times faster than the mobile internet speeds offered by existing 4G networks in the country.

“Our investments in the network bring us closer to making the highest theoretical speeds a daily reality to our customers and put us on an evolutionary path to 5G,” he said.

Ooredoo added more than 2 million LTE subscribers since Q3 2016 to take the total to 4.6 million at end-September, representing 60 per cent of its 7.7 million mobile subscribers, according to GSMA Intelligence.

However the company has seen its market share drop 3 percentage points over the past year to 15.4 per cent as it lost more than 1 million total mobile subscribers between Q3 2016 and Q3 2017.

State-owned MPT has a 46 per cent market share (up from 44 per cent a year ago), while Telenor Myanmar has a 38 per cent share (up 1 percentage point from Q3 2016).