back to article Myanmar picks for telecoms jackpot stoke controversy

The Myanmar government has awarded Norway’s Telenor and Qatar’s Ooredoo each a lucrative contract to run a telecoms license in the country, in a move which is already proving controversial. The government announced the decision via presidential spokesperson Ye Htut’s Facebook page last Thursday, adding that a consortium of …

COMMENTS

This topic is closed for new posts.
  1. tojb
    Big Brother

    Censorship in Myanmar has previously been a real pain

    Guy Delisle describes in his "Chroniques Birmanes" that after mentioning something in which triggered a filter, the Medecins Sans Frontieres emails in and out of Myanmar were all then subsequently censored "by hand": read by a human before being allowed to go through, causing them to take weeks to be delivered, if at all.

    A friendly word with the appropriate bureau restored normal service, but all the same....

    It puts the current hoo-ha with the NSA in perspective: imagine waiting a week for the government to read each one of your emails before passing them on.

    *Chroniques Birmanes is a graphic novel: not exactly the most official of news sources. Very good though.

  2. MJI Silver badge

    Never heard of the place!

    Is it near Teletubby land?

    Middle Earth?

    We neeed to know!

    1. Thecowking

      Re: Never heard of the place!

      Indeed, I can't see it on my map.

      I think it neighbours Elbonia.

      1. MJI Silver badge

        Re: Never heard of the place!

        I've heard of Elbonia!

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Spelling ...or subtle political comment?

    "There have been claims that the authorities are not doing enough to diffuse the violence "

    That near-homonym would mean they were spreading the violence over a wider area. The intended word was presumably defuse.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    contradiction in terms ...

    Institute for Human Rights and Business (IHRB) ??

  5. Stilted Banter
    Stop

    There's a perfectly good English name for the place

    It's Burma. You mention Norway in this article, but choose not to call it 'Norge'.

    1. gazthejourno (Written by Reg staff)

      Re: There's a perfectly good English name for the place

      Myanmar is what the government of the country wants it to be called by the rest of the world. Never really caught on, though.

    2. Fibbles

      Re: There's a perfectly good English name for the place

      Well, the BBC has always referred to the place as Burma rather than Myanmar. The justification given was that Myanmar was a name instituted by a repressive military regime which the BBC didn't want to appear to be legitimising.

      The correct name to use for a country is a tricky subject though. For example we call our neighbour Ireland rather than Eire because that's what we've always called it. Yet we refer to that country in the middle-east as Iran, as its leaders wish, rather than Persia as we always used to call it.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: There's a perfectly good English name for the place

        You call your neighbour country Ireland, because that's what the Irish Constitution says it's name is in the English Language, and it's what the English speaking population of Ireland call the place. Ireland is a bi-lingual country (at least officially!), and many places have quite different names in the Irish and English languages (Baile Atha Cliath is the Irish language name for for Dublin, Waterford is called in Irish).

This topic is closed for new posts.

Other stories you might like