Author: frontiirwbadmin

Learning Center

President Mahn Win Maung Learning Center

President Mahn Win Maung was the third president of Myanmar. He was born in March 1957 and had worked for five years until 2 March 1962 before General Ne Win military Government.  He died on 4 July 1989.

In 2019 Frontiir established President Mahn Win Maung Learning Center at former president Mahn Win Maung’s home in Yangon Regional Government Compound, Ahlone Township, Yangon. 

Frontiir backed renovation of President Mahn Win Maung’s old home for learning center and founded a library and supported librarians. Frontiir supported the Learning Center intended for young generation notably Regional Government Compound families and youth people.

 We supported Computer, English language and basic communication skill training for the children in this Learning Center. We will train many development training sessions for the children every summer.

Overview

Founded in 2013 by Myanmar-born MIT doctorate and ICT expert Dr. Godfrey Tan (also known as Wai Lin Tun) together with co-founders MIT doctorate Dr. Allen Miu and Mr. Minn Thein, Frontiir is an international company with the main operating subsidiary in Myanmar. Although Frontiir has reputable western investors that follow global governance standards, Frontiir remains firmly in control of Godfrey and his friends. Known simply by his friends and colleagues as “Ko Wai Lin”, he has been leading Frontiir and its popular Myanmar Net service with a passion for engineering and innovation and an unrelenting dedication and focus to provide internet access at a price that everyone can afford in Myanmar. Frontiir employs a few thousand employees across several cities and more than 99% of its employees are Myanmar-born. Frontiir prides itself of being able to do quality innovation recognized at the international level. The popular consumer brand name “Myanmar Net” itself was selected over “Frontiir Net” or other fancy names in 2015 so that Myanmar people can be proud that the affordable and high-quality internet service is made possible by a team of Myanmar-born people united to its mission.

Frontiir’s missions is to provide affordable digital access and useful information services to people while bridging the global digital divide. This mission was achieved with the launch of Myanmar Net brand internet services in Myanmar, which is now providing low-cost high-speed broadband internet services to 2 million users in Myanmar for as little as US$ 0.13 per day.

Myanmar Net network is developed with Frontiir’s unique proprietary technology, which is highly cost-effective, and is the world largest Single Home WiFi network (US-Patented on the Network Access Gateway architecture). In addition to the patented network and systems design, Frontiir’s world class engineers also developed a number of hardware products specifically designed to efficiently deploy within the network. Frontiir received ASEAN Business Award in innovations (2018) and ASEAN Outstanding Engineering Award (2019) for innovative technology. Five years since the deployment of the Myanmar Net network in Myanmar, Frontiir has been able to improve on its technical design and achieve further enhanced cost effectiveness, enabling network expansion to rural areas.

Catch a glimpse of FRONTIIR

Frontiir in Myanmar

Upon the liberation of Myanmar telecoms sector in 2014, internet use has rapidly increased from 6 million users in 2014 to almost 22 million users in 2019. Frontiir launched Myanmar Net internet services in 2015, and is the only service provider which serves the poor with low-cost unlimited fast broadband internet with prepaid cards – daily, weekly and monthly, as low as US$ 0.13 a day.

In line with Frontiir’s mission, to provide affordable digital access and useful information services to people and help bridge the global digital divide, Frontiir is proud to be able to contribute largely to increasing the internet access in Myanmar. As of 2020, Frontiir’s Myanmar Net is the largest Internet Service Provider in Myanmar with more than 2 million monthly users in seven large cities and is rapidly expanding.

With its proprietary patented WiFi mesh technology, Frontiir was able to put Yangon and Mandalay on the world map as two of the few cities in the world with WiFi coverage throughout the city, enabling the population to access the internet in public spaces.

Job creation being one of the company’s aims, 99.9% of Frontiir’s 2,400 employees are Myanmar and majority of the employees send their remittance back to their families in the rural areas. Frontiir will continue to create jobs with its rapid expansion to the remaining regions in Myanmar over the next five years, including 8% of the rural areas, creating more opportunities and a greater sense of connection.

Myanmar Overview

The Republic of Union of Myanmar (Burma) is the largest country in mainland Southeast Asia with a diverse population of over 135 different ethnic groups in the country. Predominantly Buddhists (over 87%). Myanmar’s rich cultural heritage started with the Tibeto-Burman Pyu city-state around the second century BCE.

Since 2012, Myanmar has been transitioning to a democratic nation after 50 years of struggle under military rule. Myanmar is an emerging economy with a rapidly growing middle class, and although Myanmar’s transitioning economy still faces challenges from years in isolation and civil wars, the country’s economy has continuously grown at an approximate rate of 6-8%.

Founder and Co-Founders

Godfrey Tan (aka) Wai Lin Tun, Founder, Chairman & CEO

Dr Godfrey Tan, also known as Wai Lin Tun, is Founder, Chairman and CEO of Frontiir. Dr Wai Lin Tun was born and raised in downtown Yangon and completed his high school education at Dagon 1. He graduated with B.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) with the Highest Honors from UC Berkeley. In addition, he holds S.M. and Ph.D. degrees in EECS from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His doctoral thesis was about improving aggregate user throughput and providing fairness in multi-rate WiFi networks. He has published more than a dozen papers in wireless networking, cloud computing and business intelligence and holds several US and international patents in the area of networking and computing. 

Godfrey focuses on vision and strategies for Frontiir while driving strategic initiatives, continuous capital efficiency improvements and product formulations. Under his leadership, Frontiir has been continuously developing low-cost proprietary technologies and growing rapidly to provide unlimited broadband Internet service to millions in Myanmar for as low as $0.13 per day per person and $5.3 per month per household. Frontiir today is the largest fixed broadband provider in Myanmar propelling the country’s broadband penetration to new heights in both urban and rural areas alike.

Prior to founding Frontiir, Godfrey spent seven years at Intel, holding various roles as senior product strategist, program manager and lead architect. In his most recent role as senior product strategist, he was responsible for all facets of some of Intel Cloud Services Platform products and drove the strategies and execution of those products from planning and development to beta launch. He also managed the Intel AppUp Developer Program for a year and spent several years as lead architect for the Intel data centers resource management initiative and business intelligence programs for silicon design computing. The successful execution of these strategic initiatives helped Intel save tens of millions of dollars in annual capital expense and has improved business agility since 2007. For his contributions, Godfrey received many awards at Intel, including the prestigious Intel Achievement Award. He also worked as a software developer at Echelon for a couple of years and interned at HP Labs and Mazu Networks.

Allen Miu, Co-Founder & Chief Technology Officer

Dr. Allen Miu is a Co-founder of Frontiir and serves as Chief Technology Officer. Before founding Frontiir, Dr. Mui served seven years as a Wireless System Architect and Principal Engineer at Ruckus Wireless, Inc., a newly listed company on NYSE with over USD$1.6 Billion capitalization. Dr. Mui initially helped develop Ruckus’s 802.11n Enterprise and IPTV platforms and later became the chief architect and lead developer behind Ruckus SmartMesh, a WiFi based self-forming, self-healing multi-hop directional wireless networking system. SmartMesh has been deployed to support a wide variety of applications such as Mobile Data offload, Wireless DSL, Hotspots, Hotzones, Femtocell and Picocell backhauling. Dr. Mui works tirelessly with carrier customers worldwide to help plan, troubleshoot, and optimize their wireless deployments.

Having had successful tenure at Ruckus, Dr. Mui now leads Frontiir’s technical team to fulfill the company’s mission of delivering affordable and innovative digital solutions to local schools, businesses, and the common people of Myanmar. Dr. Allen Miu holds a B.Sc. in EECS with Highest Honors from UC Berkeley, and S.M. and PhD degrees in CS from MIT. He has published over 10 conference papers and articles and holds five US patents on wireless local area networks and mobile location systems.

Minn Thein, Co-Founder & Chief Administrative Officer

Mr. Minn Thein is a co-founder of Frontiir and serves as CAO. Mr. Thein brings 14 years of consulting, building, and leading globally distributed IT engineering teams delivering highly complex enterprise business solutions to multinational corporations and governments. Prior to joining Frontiir, Mr. Thein was a Senior Director at Avanade where he had built and led high-performing product engineering teams in the area of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) products for Avanade Software and Cloud Services (SCS) organization. Prior to SCS, Mr. Thein worked as a senior developer and architect for Avanade Connected Architecture (ACA.NET) where he designed and built enterprise software development platforms. Mr. Thein holds BSEE from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a technology patent in the area of SOA architecture.

Our Mission

Our mission is to provide affordable digital access and useful information services to people and help bridge the global digital divide.

85% of the world’s populations live in developing countries. A large fraction of them live in frontier countries with per capital GDP of a few thousand dollars or less and a typical broadband penetration rate in a single digit. Broadband access cost is often multiple times higher in those countries than in developed countries and businesses and consumers do not typical utilize IT services. We think is a problem. We envision three implementation phases in helping overcome the world’s digital divide. The end-states of these phases are as follows.

–  Affordable Digital Information Access: most have access to affordable and effective communications services.

–  Access to Useful IT Services: most use ubiquitous IT services to improve productivity, healthcare & quality of life.

–  Become Providers of Services: most actively participate in digital economies to earn money and further their causes.

We currently focus on realizing solutions for the first phase while laying foundation for the second phase. While we are committed to realizing ubiquitous and affordable digital access to consumers, our story is incomplete without addressing the digital divide experienced by businesses in frontier countries. Most of these businesses do not have reliable IT infrastructure and are at a significant disadvantage in competing against large multi-national corporations. The success of local businesses in a frontier country is not only important for creating local jobs but also critical for ensuring long-term sustainability of its progress towards a more developed country. Thus, we also focus on delivering enterprise IT solutions and services for local businesses at most affordable prices so that they can close the productivity and agility gaps that exist between them and their multi-national competitors.   Our approach to solving these problems is to innovate to deliver most affordable and the hightest performing capabilities. Our solutions tend to demonstrate 10x price-performance advantage over comparable ones available in developed countries. In fact, we think that an order of magnitude gain in price-performance is a must to solve the aforementioned problems since the GDP of a typical frontier country is less than one-tenth of a typical developed country. There are however advantages to frontier countries in coming from behind. WE can obserbe the technological evolution that had already taken place in developed countries and choose to adopt the right technologies at the present time. We do not need or want to replicate the technology adoption steps in the same way that had happened in developed countries. Cellphones are a great example. There are now more mobile than fixed broadband access available in developing countries. As we dissect the inforcomm technology evolution and understand the challenges that are specific to each frontier county, we can rethink and leapfrog and arrive at an innovative soloution in achieving 10x price-performace. That’s our approach!

Support to 27th SEA Game

Frontiir is proud to support 27th SEA Game 

Myanmar hosted 27th Southeast Asian Games multi – sport events that took place in 4 cities of Myanmar- Yangon, Mandalay, Nay Pyi Taw and NgweSaung. It was the third time SEA Game celebrations of Myanmar and 40 decades after the last time the country hosted the SEA Games.  The country hosted the Games in 1961 and 1969 in Yangon, the capital city of the country. Frontiir supported official Information and Communications Technology Sponsor and Partner of SEA Games Myanmar.

Frontiir team is proud to support Private Network, internet between 4 cities and SEA Game Verification and Information System (SVIS) for 27th SEA Games. We contributed to the 27th SEA Games success and donated the technology to quickly deliver the Game scores and to verify the Delegates. 

Frontiir SEA Games Private Network

         Frontiir designed and deployed the SEA Games Private Network for 27th SEA Games to provide secure data connection between SEA Games data center and 24 venues, covering four cities in Myanmar.

Private Network was deployed using the existing fiber network provided by MPT. The private network will be exclusively used by Games Management System (GMS) and SEA Games Verification and Information System (SVIS). GMS is the official game management system used to collect data for all sporting events during SEA Games. Through the Private Network, official game results were updated instantaneously on various media platforms. 

Frontiir SEA Games Verification and Information System (SVIS)

         35 delegates, including athletes, participated in the 27th SEA Games. Frontiir built the SVIS system to provide verification of their accreditation for all venues of SEA Games. Fixed and mobile verification stations were deployed at 36 locations covering 24 venues. All delegates were issued ID cards with a barcode. SVIS client used the barcode to verify everyone entering the venue. The SVIS system was built using Frontiir Open ERP system.         SEA Games Mobile application was also launched for free download, which enabled delegates to access SVIS information as well as Game information for the public. Fantasy football game with prizes were included in the app for entertainment in the spirit of the SEA Games. The mobile application gave crucial Game information to delegates, and also using the app, attendees were able to exchange their information among their peers by simply their peer scan their barcode.

Our Milestone

Frontiir, the prestigious company, set up telecommunication business in 2012. At that time Myanmar Telecom business had not developed but our leader team believed we would be stronger. World-class technical experts led Frontiir Company. In 2012, our team opened ERP partner in Myanmar and launched UniNet in Myanmar in 2013.

Our company was Official 27th SEA Games IT & Networking Partner and Sponsor in 2013. Frontiir provided WiFi Network for ASEAN Summit Metting and launched WiFi in Pun hlaing in 2014.

World-class technical experts’ leaders start Internet service providing within two year of received International Gateway Service Facilities (IGW) Licensee, as well as a Network Facilities Service (Individual) Licensee. Myanmar Net’s affordable unlimited internet was launched, following a showroom opening in 2015.

In 2016, Myanmar Net user reached over 100,000 and started opening KTBG Office in 2017. Frontiir continuously expanded its Myanmar Net affordable unlimited internet from Yangon to  Mandalay, encouraging Mandalay to keep their Wi-Fi connections turned on at all to take advantage of their “A Wa Tone Internet”

Frontiir absolutely succeeded from 2012 to 2018 so New Frontiir Head Quarter opened in Yangon in 2018. Also we made SME show and Myanmar Net Job Fair and celebrated Fifth Anniversary in this year. Frontiir Co., Ltd is proud to have  received “2018 Innovation Award” recognized for its innovative technology by the ASEAN Business Advisory Council (ASEAN-BAC) in Singapore.

         We opened Myanmar Net showroom and launched TVie new product of the Frontiir in 2019. We supported “U Man Win Maung Learning Center” for Myanmar people in this year. We were awarded “2019 ASEAN Outstanding Engineering Achievement Award”.

In 2020, Frontiir internet service provider “Myanmar Net” expanded internet connection network in Mawlamyine City, Mon State. Frontiir strengths connected widely Myanmar Net internet service at Yangon, Mandalay, Bago and Mawlamyaing Cities from 2015 to 2020.

Frontiir donated many surgical masks, medical mask Health Net Program to support the COVID – 19 Virus protect and controlling process of Myanmar Ministry of Health and Sports , Hospital and Health Department in  COVID 19 pandemic period of 2020.  And we made a job partner with Ascent Capital and they invested US$ 26 million for our Frontiir on June 2020.

Sustainable Network

Internet provision with its network infrastructure and data center is regarded as an energy intensive industry. Frontiir is concerned with the energy consumption of its infrastructure and services.

In addition to following international standards on green initiatives and waste management for the network providers, Frontiir has developed innovative solutions with regards to design and systems of electrical supply connected to the network and the data centers.

Frontiir is now in its third generation of energy consumption improvement network design which is 15% to 20% more energy-efficient compared to traditional network designs.