Bharti named bidder in race for Myanmar mobile licences

YANGON (Reuters) - Myanmar has announced the names of 12 international consortia that have pre-qualified to bid for two mobile licences, moving closer to opening one of the last major untapped mobile markets.

The companies include Bharti Airtel Ltd, China Mobile, Japan's KDDI Corp, Africa's MTN, Singapore Telecommunications Ltd, Norway's Telenor SA and Digicel, a group backed by billionaire George Soros.

"The pre-qualified applicants will be required to submit their applications to the committee by June 3, 2013," the Telecommunications Operator Tender Evaluation and Selection Committee said on its website on Thursday.

The committee expects to announce the names of two winners to receive 15-year telecommunications licences by June 27, it said.

China Mobile has teamed up with Vodafone , while France Telecom-Orange is working with Marubeni, and Africa's MTN with M1 Telecom and Amara Communications.

SingTel has joined with Myanmar Telephone Co Ltd and KBZ, while KDDI has teamed up with Japan's Sumitomo Corp and Myanmar Information and Communication Technology Development Corp.

Other pre-qualifiers are Axiata Group, Millicom International Cellular SA, Qatar Telecom and Viettel Group.

The bidding has attracted wide interest from international telecoms firms, which see huge opportunities in a country of 60 million where mobile penetration is just 5-10 percent, compared with rates of over 100 percent in many developed markets.

Myanmar, where SIM cards are prohibitively expensive, has said it hopes to increase mobile penetration to 80 percent in three years, lifting it off the bottom of the world's ladder of mobile use.

(Reporting by Aung Hla Tun; Writing by Khettiya Jittapong; Editing by Mark Potter)