U Myo Swe, director-general of the Directorate of Communications under the Ministry of Transport and Communications said that as per the government regulations, operators will start from July 1st to deactivate all unregistered SIM cards in the country – believed to be up to 11.5 million according to a Frontier report.

“We will terminate unregistered SIM cards from July 1 and users will not be able to register blocked cards. Operators can begin blocking them and we will obtain the exact number of blocked cards,” Myo Swe said.

The 4 operators are urged to comply with the government or face hefty fines. Telenor’s CEO wrote an open letter in the press to publicly state the position of the operator regarding the regulations. Prior to the mass deactivation, Myanmar had 68.24 million mobile connections as of January 2020, or a penetration rate of 126%.