U9 Myanmar
Native name | ယူနိုင်း မြန်မာ |
|---|---|
| Industry | Telecommunications |
| Founded | 2013 (as Ooredoo Myanmar) |
| Headquarters | , |
Key people | Caroline Yin Yin Htay (CEO) |
| Parent | Nine Communications Pvt. Ltd. |
| Website | u9myanmar |
U9 Myanmar (Burmese: ယူနိုင်း မြန်မာ, formerly known as Ooredoo Myanmar, Burmese: အူရီဒူး မြန်မာ), or simply U9, is a telecommunications company in Myanmar.
History
In June 2013, Ooredoo was chosen as one of the two successful applicants among 90 bidders to be awarded a license to launch telecom operations in Myanmar, considered one of the Asia’s last remaining greenfield telecom markets.[1] Formal licenses were granted in January 2014, and Ooredoo pledged an investment of $15 billion to develop Myanmar’s telecoms sector, with plans to cover 75% of the population in five years.[2]
Following the 2021 Myanmar coup d'etat, many foreign companies exited the Burmese market, including competitor Norwegian-owned Telenor Myanmar, due to increasing pressure from military authorities.[3] On 7 September 2022, Ooredoo signed an agreement to sell Ooredoo Myanmar to Singapore vehicle Nine Communications Pte. Ltd, at a value of $576 million USD, subject to Burmese regulatory approvals.[4] Nine Communications is the subsidiary of zLink Family Office and Nyan Win.[5]
In September 2025, at least three media outlets reported that the new controlling owner behind the company was Jonathan Kyaw Thaung (of KT Group). Similarly, an article published on 23 October 2022 by the independent outlet People’s Spring News stated that “the group behind Nyan Win is not Zaw Win Shein or the Ayeyar Hinthar Group, but a more powerful and financially resourceful entity. The main owners have kept their identities concealed, making the ownership structure increasingly opaque.[6][7] .[8][9][10][11]
The announcement of Ooredoo's sale prompted sharp criticism from rights groups, including Access Now, for putting the personal data of 9 million customers in the hands of the Burmese military.[12] The company officially rebranded as U9 on 20 September 2025.[13]
Leadership
In 2019, Ooredoo Myanmar appointed Rajeev Sethi as its CEO.[14] Right before the sale, Ooredoo appointed their Chief of Sales and Distribution Htar Thant Zin as Acting CEO on November 1, 2022.[15] After the sale to Nine Communications, the CEO of Ooredoo Myanmar (now U9) is Caroline Yin Yin Htay.[16]
See also
References
- ^ "Burma awards lucrative mobile phone contracts - BBC News". Bbc.co.uk. Retrieved 2016-05-03.
- ^ "Exclusive: Ooredoo CEO Dr.Nasser Marafih On Rebranding, Taxes And 2022 World Cup". Business Gulf. Gulf Business. 2014-08-03. Archived from the original on 2016-03-10. Retrieved 2016-05-03.
- ^ Potkin, Fanny; Aung, Thu Thu (2022-09-05). "EXCLUSIVE Qatar's Ooredoo to sell Myanmar unit to Singapore firm-sources". Reuters. Retrieved 2022-09-21.
- ^ "Qatar's Ooredoo sells Myanmar unit for $576 million". Reuters. 2022-09-08. Retrieved 2022-09-21.
- ^ "အမေရိကန် ဒဏ်ခတ်ပိတ်ဆို့ထားသည့် ဂျော်နသန်ကျော်သောင်း အူရီဒူးမြန်မာ ပိုင်ရှင်ဖြစ်လာ". 11 September 2025.
- ^ "အူရီဒူးကို စစ်အုပ်စုထောက်တိုင်မျိုးဆက် လက်လွှဲရယူပြီးနောက် တယ်လီကွန်းအားလုံး စစ်ကော်မရှင်တပ် ထိန်းချုပ်မှုအောက် အလုံးစုံကျရောက်". 4 October 2025.
- ^ "လက်နက်ပွဲစားလို့ နာမည်ထွက်နေသူ ဂျော်နသန် ကျော်သောင်းက အော်ရီဒူး ပိုင်ရှင်ဖြစ်လာ". 12 September 2025.
- ^ "လက်ထဲက ဖုန်းဆင်းကဒ်တွေ စိုးရိမ်စရာဖြစ်လာနေပြီလား". 23 September 2025.
- ^ "Ooredoo Group Announces the Sale of its Telecom Business in Myanmar to Nine Communications Pte. Ltd at an Enterprise Value of USD 576 million". ooredoo. 8 Sep 2022. Retrieved 26 Oct 2025.
- ^ Irrawaddy, The (2022-09-12). "Military Crony Linked to New Ownership of Ooredoo's Myanmar Unit". The Irrawaddy. Retrieved 2023-02-12.
- ^ LuduNwayOo (2022-11-24). "The main orchestrator behind the sale of Ooredoo Myanmar". LuduNwayOo. Retrieved 2023-02-12.
- ^ Skok, Golda Benjamin, Raman Jit Singh Chima, Wai Phyo Myint, Alexia (2022-09-15). "Ooredoo's plans to leave Myanmar hands military full control of nation's telco sector — it must mitigate the human rights risks". Access Now. Retrieved 2023-02-12.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - ^ "Ooredoo Myanmar to rebrand as U9". U9 Myanmar. 2025-09-11. Retrieved 2025-12-02.
- ^ Telecomdrive Bureau (28 May 2019). "Ooredoo Appoints Rajeev Sethi as new CEO for Ooredoo Myanmar". Telecom Drive. Retrieved 17 June 2019.
- ^ https://www.ooredoo.com/en/media/news_view/ooredoo-group-announces-the-appointment-of-htar-thant-zin-as-acting-ceo-for-ooredoo-myanmar/
- ^ https://ooredoo.com.mm/portal/en/ooredoo_myanmar_to_rebrand_as_u9