The Internet in Myanmar has been available since 2000 when the first Internet connections were established. Beginning in September 2011, historically pervasive levels of Internet censorship in Burma were significantly reduced. Prior to September 2011, the military government worked aggressively to limit and control Internet access through software-based censorship, infrastructure and technical constraints, and laws and regulations with large fines and lengthy prison sentences for violators."Internet Services Tariff", Myanmar Posts and Telecommunications, Information Technology department, Ministry of Communications, Posts and Telegraphs, accessed 10 June 2011 "Internet Cafe in Myanmar" , Today in Myanmar, 13 February 2009 In 2015, internet usage significantly increased to 12.6% with the introduction of faster mobile 3G internet by transnational telecommunication companies Telenor Myanmar and Ooredoo Myanmar, later joined by national Myanmar Post and Telecommunications(MPT). While the Internet situation in Myanmar has undergone change since its introduction in 2010 and reduction of censorship in 2011, laws such as the 2013 Telecommunications Law continue to restrict citizens from total freedom online. Despite restrictions, internet penetration continues to grow across the country.
Following the 2021 Myanmar coup d'état, internet access was shut off daily between the hours of 1:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. Social media networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp, Wikipedia and its related sister projects, international and local media, and the websites of anti-coup organizations (including the CRPH), were also banned by the ruling junta.
On 15 March 2021, the military completely shut off mobile internet access in Myanmar, and all internet access on 18 March.
Myanmar's top-level domain is '.mm'.
Access and usage
Service providers
Yatanarpon Teleport,"Company at a glance" , Yatanarpon Teleport Co., Ltd. 5BB Broadband, satellite internet provider Skynet, the state-owned Myanmar Post and Telecommunication (MPT), WeLink Myanmar, Myanmar Net, Myanmar Speednet, AGB Communication, Fortune Broadband, Kinetic Myanmar Technology, Ooredoo Myanmar, Telenor Myanmar, Mytel, Uplink Myanmar and some others are the Internet service providers in Yangon and Mandalay."Myanmar Internet Provider" , Guide for Myanmar 2007s-down.html "Internet service hampered as Myanmar Teleport server breaks down", Mizzima News Agency, 10 February 2009
Before democratization in 2011, Internet cafés were the most common method of accessing the Internet, as most were equipped with proxy servers in order to bypass government censorship."No More Proxies: Myanmar Teleport" , Saw Yan Naing, The Irrawaddy Publishing Group, 29 May 2008"Bypassing Internet Censorship in Burma / Myanmar" , VPNHero.com, 16 March 2011 The popularity of Internet cafés declined with the emergence of improved telecommunication infrastructure following liberalization, which allowed mobile Internet to achieve widespread use. However, Internet cafés are still widely present, especially in Yangon and Mandalay, where they are used extensively for blogging.
The number of Internet service providers has enormously increased since 2015, and mobile data usage fees have also decreased to 1 MB per 5 Kyat (US$0.0035 estimated), with FTTH monthly fees starting from 20,000 Kyat (US$14.19 estimated) for 10 Mbit/s.
Internet in other towns and rural areas Internet access for home use in areas outside of Yangon and Mandalay is only available through ADSL technology provided by MPT. However, its pricing is prohibitively expensive for most customers. In 2017, MPT's fixed-line phone (new installation) price for ADSL was Ks.3,25,000/- (US$240 estimated), including an initial setup fee of Ks.50,000/- (US$37 estimated) without a CPE. The annual fee is Ks.50,000/- (US$37 estimated), while the monthly fee for 512 kbit/s (lowest bandwidth) is Ks.17,000/- (US$13 estimated). 2.5 Mbit/s, the highest bandwidth available, is offered at Ks.80,000/- (US$60 estimated). FTTH Internet is unavailable in rural areas.
FTTH service providers are also available in some towns that are not included in Yangon and Mandalay regions.
Internet penetration
Myanmar has a very low Internet penetration rate due to government restrictions on pricing and deliberate lack of facilities and infrastructure. According to World Internet Stats statistics, Myanmar had over 534,930 Internet users (1.0% of the population) in June 2012, with the vast majority of users hailing from the two largest cities, Yangon and Mandalay."Asia" , Internet World Stats, 23 September 2013. Retrieved 31 October 2013. Although 42 cities across the country have access to the Internet, the number of users outside of Yangon and Mandalay is just over 10,000. In the same year, most of the country's 40,000 Internet connections were ADSL circuits, followed by dial-up, satellite terminal, and WiMax. MPT is also undertaking a trial of fibre-to-the-home in Mandalay, and plans to roll out a similar trial in Yangon. On 22 July 2015, the CEO of Telenor Myanmar announced that 55% of Telenor's 10 million mobile subscribers were data users, increasing the low estimate of internet users in Myanmar to at least 5.5 million. Internet World Statistics reported in Nov 2015 that penetration was 12.6%. As of 30 June 2017 Myanmar has 13,747,506 internet users, 25.1% population penetration, and 11,000,000 Facebook users.
Mobile phone usage With the growth of Internet use in Myanmar and opening of telecommunications, the price of SIM cards has decreased from Ks.2,45,000/- (reported as US$250) in 2013 to Ks.1,542/- (reported as US$1.50) in 2014." While costs remain high across the country, ranking 148th out of 188 of countries on the United Nations Development Programme's Human Development Index that have 66.9% of the country making less than Ks.2,622/- per day ($2.00 USD), Mobile Media & Communication found that "Myanmar people are willing to pay for mobiles, with over 18.1 million active SIM cards."
VSAT service providers Due to the geography of Myanmar, VSAT services have remained viable. While IPStar services had previously been offered, commercial VSAT service providers began emerging in 2016 and 2017.
Font conflicts
Amid the growth of Internet access across the country, ACM Computers & Society found that the Burmese-text font, Zawgyi, "may impede the digital potential of the country." Zawgyi, considered the most widely used font throughout Myanmar, is incompatible with Unicode, meaning that it does not use "an intelligent rendering engine to make sure each script element has one and only one code point." This may prevent websites displaying the Zawgyi font from being accessible to users from other countries or those displaying text using Unicode.
ACM Computers & Society also cautioned that typing certain ethnic languages of Myanmar with Zawgyi may be difficult, meaning that "Myanmar’s ethnic languages cannot be represented or co-exist with Burmese languages when the non-Unicode Zawgyi font is used."
Unicode began to spread throughout Myanmar thanks to initiatives such as including both Zawgyi and Unicode on Android versions 4.4 and newer. Lorian Leong of Mobile Media & Communication found that the lack of Unicode "influences users' access and dependency on others to help install such services, and creates constraints and limitations to content."
Blogging
An October 2010 survey found that blogging is the fastest growing type of Internet activity in Myanmar, with a 25 percent increase from 2009."Blogging Increases 25% Within A Year" (Blog Yay Thar Hmu Ta Nhit Ah Twin 25 Yar Khaing Hnoan Toe Lar) , Myanmar Internet Journal, 17 December 2010 A non-scientific survey taken in 2009 found that:“Myanmar Blogger Survey 2009” , Nyi Lynn Seck, Myanmar Blogger Society, Rangoon, slides, 2 February 2010 Blogs focus on entertainment (14%), technology, computers, and the Internet (17%), books and literature (9%), news (6%), hobbies and travel (6%), politics (5%), and religion (4%), among other topics; 52 percent of Burmese bloggers write from Burma and 48 percent write from abroad; 72% of bloggers are men and 27% are women; 77% of bloggers are single and 14% are married; 35 percent of bloggers are 26 to 30 years old and 29 percent are 21 to 25 years old; 80 percent blog in Burmese, 8 percent blog in English, 10 percent blog in both languages, and the rest use ethnic minority languages such as Kachin, Karen, and Chin.
Social media According to the Development Institute of the Russian Federation, Myanmar "still [has] social media penetration levels below 10%." Despite this, internet and social media usage is still rising and influential, with Facebook usage among a variety of people in Myanmar, including farmers. While social media usage spreads, people using platforms such as Facebook use it for controversially both good and bad reasons.
According to Reuters, "U.N. human rights experts investigating a possible genocide in Myanmar said [...] that Facebook had played a role in spreading hate speech there." The Rohingya genocide was found to be affected by Facebook, as Reuters found that while Facebook was broadly "used to convey public messages", it also allowed ultra-nationalist Buddhist groups to incite violence and "hatred against the Rohingya or other ethnic minorities."
With the growth of social media and its capability to spread both news and opinionated information, some information managers in Myanmar are learning about the potential of social media through a workshop run by UNESCO, the Myanmar Information Management Unit, and the ICT4Peace Foundation, all of which discuss big data and trends. According to UNESCO, the workshop "gave participants a chance to learn about social media and data trends, the platforms available, their characteristics, and how to effectively leverage these for crisis information management" in addition to advising the managers about the use of social media in issues such as hate speech or election violence.
Censorship As Myanmar gradually expands its technologies and Internet access, censorship remains a problem, with Freedom House in its 2017 Myanmar country profile stating that "conditions for the media in Myanmar have improved significantly since the country began its ongoing transition from military dictatorship toward electoral democracy. However, the government maintains tight control over the media sector through the use of harsh defamation and other laws." Since the introduction of the Internet to the country, Myanmar has faced criticism from several organizations for its actions regarding censorship, some of which are listed below:
Listed as selective in the political and Internet tools areas, as substantial in social, and with no evidence of filtering in conflict/security by the OpenNet Initiative in August 2012.OpenNet Initiative "Summarized global Internet filtering data spreadsheet" , 29 October 2012 and "Country Profiles" , the OpenNet Initiative is a collaborative partnership of the Citizen Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto; the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University; and the SecDev Group, Ottawa"ONI Country Profile: Burma" , OpenNet Initiative, 6 August 2012 Listed as an Internet enemy by Reporters Without Borders (RWB) in 2011. Listed as not free for both net freedom and press freedom according to Freedom House in 2017.
History