A Buddhist monk walks inside a mobile phone shop in Yangon. Cellular operator Digicel Group jumped into Myanmar early and big, hiring staff, funding local sports, negotiating land deals for thousands of cell tower sites and signing up hundreds of partners for retail outlets. The strategy helped propel it onto the shortlist for a mobile licence in one of the world's last mobile frontiers, putting an operator that ranks 65th globally in terms of customers up against giants such as Vodafone Group. Myanmar in April 2013 short-listed 12 consortia for two licences it plans to grant foreign operators in late June. The government wants to expand mobile penetration from less than 4 per cent to up to 80 per cent by 2015-16. - Reuters/Soe Zeya Tun