Singapore Windsor Holdings Limited has announced that its subsidiary, Myanmar Infrastructure Group, has secured a build-and-lease contract of 500 telecommunication towers for Ooredoo Myanmar. In a release, the company said that it has diversified from its traditional printed circuit business board activities to focusing heavily on opportunities in Myanmar.

In May 2014, Singapore Windsor announced a joint-venture partnership to pursue opportunities in Myanmar’s growing telecommunication infrastructure group. Since the arrival of the first two international telecommunications companies, Ooredoo and Telenor, in 2014, the industry has seen significant growth.

According to industry estimates, about half of Myanmar’s population had a mobile phone subscription at the end of 2014, although that figure falls significantly below neighbouring countries such as Laos (87 percent) and Thailand (more than 100 percent), but is expected to continue to grow in the future.

In order to deal with the increased demand, it is estimated that Myanma r wi l l ne ed mor e than 17,000 telecommunication towers to be built by 2017 to cover 70 percent of the population. About 5,000 towers have so far been built. Ooredoo Myanmar also announced that current CEO Ross Cor-mack will be replaced by Rene Meza, who is currently managing director of Vodacom Tanzania. It is expected that the change-over will take place towards the end of this year.