Talk:Internet in Myanmar

message: Looks like we have two competing articles covering the same thing. I suggest we merge the material from MWW (which is a joky term invented by critics) to this page. 01:05, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree - these articles cover sufficiently similar topics that a single article would make more sense. A merger is a good idea. Terraxos 19:10, 30 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  - It seems that this merge was done back in January 2008. Jeff Ogden (W163) (talk) 06:16, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Two competing articles?

message: A user dropped by with a lot of interesting material; it's all here: Talk:Myanmar_Wide_Web, but I couldn't find any sources. We should definitely include it if we can. Sdedeo (tips) 22:29, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: interesting info on the "intranet" question

message: The following content was added by Kzl.zawlin at 15:44 on 28 February 2012:
=== Myanmar wide web ===
note: this stuff is copied from Talk:Myanmar_Wide_Web
MWW never existed in Myanmar. This must have been a result of confusions over the types of internet account. When Bagan Cybertech (BCT) first started operating in Myanmar, they sold two types of "access kits", one is called "Full Access Kits", which is sold by either FEC or USD. The kit include email account and allowed access to internet websites through the proxy servers operated by Bagan Cybertech, the same as any other ISP in any other country, although it was quite heavily censored. The user has to enter their username and password to access the proxy server and access to all pages were logged against the username, which is tied to the user's NRC number.
The second type of access kit is the "Intranet Access Kits", which is significantly cheaper and available to buy with Kyats, but only allow access to websites within .mm domains, i.e. local websites hosted on BCT servers and MPT servers. Users does not need to enter username and password to access these websites, however, should they wish to access any websites on the wider internet, they have to go through a process of requesting it through BCT web portal. The site request gets vetted and if allowed, user will be able to access the particular site for a period of time. Users are only allowed to request certain amount of site per month. This kit was favoured by many students and middle income family, who simply just want to experience the internet and use the chatrooms avilable on BCT server. The second access kit was discontinued after BCT CEO Ye Naing Win was arrested and the management of BCT falls under Ka Ka Set (Directorate of Signal) under Ministry of Defence. The new management decided that it would be pointless to continued the second access kits due to shortage of telephonelines for dialing in. Instead, they pushed out a new pricing structure on a single access kits to increase the revenue to help pay for BCT's debts. According to some reports BCT owe ShinSat over USD 3 millions at the time of Ye Naing Win's arrest.
In Any case, Myanmar Wide Web has never existed in Myanmar, it is just a product of confusion compounded by hardcore oppositions supporters bent on creating some juicy stories.
I would like to nominate this article to be deleted or replaced appropiately, unless it can be varified. All the information I have provided above can be varified directly with BCT by calling up BCT sales office or generally ask Myanmar internet users (not the ones from outside of myanmar) in general. Okkar 15:55, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Content from Kzl.zawlin

message: note: this stuff is copied from Talk:Myanmar_Wide_Web
MWW never existed in Myanmar. This must have been a result of confusions over the types of internet account. When Bagan Cybertech (BCT) first started operating in Myanmar, they sold two types of "access kits", one is called "Full Access Kits", which is sold by either FEC or USD. The kit include email account and allowed access to internet websites through the proxy servers operated by Bagan Cybertech, the same as any other ISP in any other country, although it was quite heavily censored. The user has to enter their username and password to access the proxy server and access to all pages were logged against the username, which is tied to the user's NRC number.
The second type of access kit is the "Intranet Access Kits", which is significantly cheaper and available to buy with Kyats, but only allow access to websites within .mm domains, i.e. local websites hosted on BCT servers and MPT servers. Users does not need to enter username and password to access these websites, however, should they wish to access any websites on the wider internet, they have to go through a process of requesting it through BCT web portal. The site request gets vetted and if allowed, user will be able to access the particular site for a period of time. Users are only allowed to request certain amount of site per month. This kit was favoured by many students and middle income family, who simply just want to experience the internet and use the chatrooms avilable on BCT server. The second access kit was discontinued after BCT CEO Ye Naing Win was arrested and the management of BCT falls under Ka Ka Set (Directorate of Signal) under Ministry of Defence. The new management decided that it would be pointless to continued the second access kits due to shortage of telephonelines for dialing in. Instead, they pushed out a new pricing structure on a single access kits to increase the revenue to help pay for BCT's debts. According to some reports BCT owe ShinSat over USD 3 millions at the time of Ye Naing Win's arrest.
In Any case, Myanmar Wide Web has never existed in Myanmar, it is just a product of confusion compounded by hardcore oppositions supporters bent on creating some juicy stories.
I would like to nominate this article to be deleted or replaced appropiately, unless it can be varified. All the information I have provided above can be varified directly with BCT by calling up BCT sales office or generally ask Myanmar internet users (not the ones from outside of myanmar) in general. Okkar 15:55, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Myanmar wide web 

message: This is the first of what will be several responses to the long comment entered above by Kzl.zawlin on 28 February 2012. It will likely take me several days to work through all of the issues.
The section "Myanmar wide web" is taken from a Talk:Myanmar_Wide_Web comment entered by  Okkar in January 2007. The Myanmar Wide Web article was merged into this article in 2008. I assume that most or all of Okkar's concerns were addressed at that time. Still it seems that the name "Myanmar Wide Web" is used less frequently in sources today than it once was and so I made changes to further deemphasize, but not completely remove, it in the current article. Jeff Ogden (W163) (talk) 18:06, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  response to Myanmar wide web 

message: This is the second response to the long comment entered above by Kzl.zawlin on 28 February 2012. 
In the sub-section with the heading "Bias" the claim is made that "This article fails to provide a balanced opinion because" followed by 9 bullet points outlining what Kzi.zawlin feels causes the article to be biased. I don't agree that the article is biased, but that is not to say that the article could not or should not be improved. Here are some comments on issues raised in the bullet points:
"laws and regulations with large fines and lengthy prison sentences for violators" not sourced. 
:That statement is in the lead to the article. References in the lead are not required when the lead is summarizing information that is covered in more detail in the body of the article, which this statement is. And in any case the lack of a source is only an indication of bias if the statement is untrue or misleading and I don't think that is the case here. The fact that Burma often imposes very harsh punishments for speech is reported and supported by many sources, in both the press and in non-press sources.
the problem i have with this and generally most of the article's prose is that it presents the media-hyped view rather than sticking to facts or differentiating them when they might be relevant. 
:If there is hype in the article, it should be reworded. But, unless there is evidence that the claims being made are untrue or are not supported by reliable secondary sources, this is not an indication of bias. We need very specific complaints about where the article is not "sticking to facts". My reading of the article indicates that it does a pretty good job of giving and sticking to facts and providing references to reliable secondary sources to support them.
for instance, most (as far as i can tell) prison or even death (not carried out yet and were former members from spdc), were politically motivated. it paints a very different picture whether a normal cybercafe going person is going to be subjected that kind of treatment.
:If the prison or death sentences were or were not politically motivated or directed at members of the SPDC isn't relevant as long as those sentences were enforcing censorship or were designed to intimidate others into exercising self-censorship. There have been some recent amnesties granted and a number of people have been released.  I will work to update the article to include these recent developments.
References on law come from an organiztaion which is expressedly against the regime (http://www.blc-burma.org/aboutus.html). the mission statement starts with "By vigorously opposing all unjust and oppressive laws, and by helping restore the principle of the Rule of Law, the Burma..". whois commands reveals the domain to be in thailand or at least registered to a company in thailand. granted, in the lack of anything usable resembling a reference, this should be seen as possible view into the closed nation but not taken as fact.
:Those two references are to a list of the laws in English and to the English text of one of the main laws that applies to Internet censorship. I don't see how that type of information could be biased no matter what organization is providing the information. 
the problem above is generally present in this article's selection of sources.
*most sources are news articles.
*their claim cannot be independently verified.
*the organizations behind the articles are generally anti-regime.
*as i have stated above, while they may be our only source of information, it should be conveyed to the user that sources come from opposite political ideology. 
::Some, but not all, of the sources cited are news sources. And while some of the sources cited are the "exiled media", others such as the BBC and GlobalPost are not. Non-news sources include the OpenNet Initiative, Reporters Without Borders, Freedom House, and the MIT Press. The telling thing for me is that all of these sources paint a quite consistent story about Internet censorship in Burma and that story has been consistent over many years. While it is hard to independently verify some information about a tightly controlled country such as Burma, the fact that the various reports from press and non-press sources all tell the same story goes a long way toward supporting the article as a whole and its use of the available sources.
what may help is probably the inclusion of news media that is neutral or supportive of the regime. xinhua (itself a dubious source) is the one that comes to mind and probably the only one.
:If there are articles from reliable secondary sources that provide additional information or a different perspective, it would be good to include them. I encourage people with an interest to do that. However, the lack of sources "supportive of the regime" does not in my opinion indicate that the article is biased. I am not a subscriber to the view that an objective article has to include all sides of an issue absent any judgement about the validity of those views. The key thing is to cite a number of reliable secondary sources that hopefully, when taken together, support a consistent view of the issues. I think this article does that by citing a number of different sources, some of which are not news sources as well as some news sources that are not "exile" news sources.
failure to describe the actual mechanism of censorship. this is useful because it would help if the reader knows the sophistication of the method. using something like the great firewall of china and using opensourced content-filtering software tells a great deal whatever that may be. i have tried to remedy this in another section.
:I agree that adding this information would be useful, if it is known and reliable sources can be found. I encourage anyone with an interest to expand the article along these lines. I do not think that the lack of this information makes the article biased.
the section on blogging uses a "source" which is a ppt file on slideshare and the data is based on this http://freeonlinesurveys.com/rendersurvey.asp?sid=9a6oy3au0kgurai625943. saying nothing of methodogy(or lack thereof), the sample size is 349. for a survey that anyone can fill in, any possible conclusion is most likely meaningless data.
:I added a note to make it clear that the survey is a non-scientific survey. Having done that, I don't think that the use of this survey information shows a bias unless someone can cite other sources that show that the summary presented does not reflect the responses to the survey or that the survey was conducted in a manner designed to bias the responses. The results of the surveys were cited in a report from ONI [oops, sorry, but this was cited by Freedom House in Freedom on the Net 2011 and not by ONI -Jeff Ogden (W163) (talk) 03:30, 16 March 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bias 

message: In the material that Kzl.zawlin entered above on 28 February 2012 everything from the heading "Understanding Censorship" to the end seems to be a list of notes, a very rough draft, or an outline for additions and improvements to the article with a rant or two included as well. Some of the material would probably make for good changes to the article. Some of it seems to be material that the article already covers. Large portions are historical or background information about Burma that are very general and not particularly focused on Internet censorship issues. This historical and background information may already be covered in other articles on Burma. If some of it is not, then it would be better to include the information in those articles rather than in this article, which is more narrowly focused on Internet censorship in Burma. It might be appropriate to include pointers/links to the history or background in other articles when that information is particularly relevant to understanding Internet censorship in Burma. None of the material is sourced, although there is a collection of sources given at the end that covers a very wide range of topics and some of which are already used in the article. All in all a lot of work for someone who has an interest in this subject. I don't think that any of this material supports the claim that the article is biased. -Jeff Ogden (W163) (talk) 03:05, 18 March 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Understanding Censorship 

message: On 28 February 2012 at more or less the same time that Kzl.zawlin entered his comments on this Talk page above, he added a POV template to the article that says:
:
As I explained above, I don't think that the article is biased. In the time since the POV tag was added there has been no effort on this Talk page to "resolve the dispute" other than Kzl.zawlin's initial entry and my own responses. My intention at this point is to wait several more days and if there aren't additional comments entered on this talk page supporting the idea that the article is biased, I will remove the POV tag. I think adding inline templates to the article together with specific comments on this Talk page or making improvements to the article by editing specific portions would be better ways to improve it and to resolve any problems that the article may have. Some inline templates to consider are: POV-statement, dubious, lopsided, undue-inline, Better source, verify credibility, and update after. -Jeff Ogden (W163) (talk) 03:42, 18 March 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: - I removed the POV template. -Jeff Ogden (W163) (talk) 16:38, 22 March 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Removing the POV tag? 

message: I BOLDly removed two particularly egregious sections of the article, which were merely advertising/promotion/link spamming masquerading as referenced material. The only references to speak of in the sections were mere links to the individual companies' websites. And while there was a February 2000 New York Times article mentioned in the latter section, it turns out that it made no mention of the companies listed in that section, and merely supported the claim that the companies listed were among those generally referred to in such article. I don't think this was a printed article by the way; neither LexisNexis nor Westlaw, which index the relevant periods, display the article in question, though it is available on the NYT website: . Anyhow, just thought I'd explain my removals in a bit better depth than edit summaries permit. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 12:21, 2 April 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you, Mendaliv! --Atlasowa (talk) 17:25, 2 April 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Removed spam masquerading as referenced material 

message: I have made a few edits based on my experience in May 2015 in Yangon.  I have not found any blocked sites and have stumbled on an opposition web site.  Smart phones are everywhere.  There are 3G phone networks and one 4G that shows on my phone.  The shops are also selling 3G wifi routers which are popular.
Internet speeds are not great, especially during busy times of the day.  The hotel where I am has what I am told is a fibre connection, which is OK outside of peak times.  The office has and ADSL line which is painfully slow during working hours.  3G is reported to be quite good, but I have not tried it myself.Davidbstanley (talk) 14:48, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Situation in May 2015 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just added archive links to  on Internet in Myanmar. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add  after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add  to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/20110420123218/http://www.mpt.net.mm/mpt/it/triff.html to http://www.mpt.net.mm/mpt/it/triff.html
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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Internal Google.Wikipedia.myanmar (talk) 20:10, 22 December 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Myanmar 

message: --Tracydao0205 (talk) 09:48, 20 January 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Com&Com  

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified one external link on Internet in Myanmar. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20110501121716/http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=14614 to http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=14614
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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified 2 external links on Internet in Myanmar. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20100209020418/http://www.mizzima.com/research/3202-the-internet-in-burma-1998-2009-.html to http://www.mizzima.com/research/3202-the-internet-in-burma-1998-2009-.html
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20141030202635/http://www.rsf.org/IMG/pdf/Internet_enemies_2009_2_.pdf to http://www.rsf.org/IMG/pdf/Internet_enemies_2009_2_.pdf
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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Hello! This article does a great job at stating neutral information. It presents multiple sources and perspectives on the issue of internet in Myanmar. As well, it provides a comprehensive overview of the topic. However, I do think this article's organization can be improved and sections need to be more directly connected to Myanmar's internet situation. As a reader it was hard to follow the subgroups of information. There were two main sections the "Access and usage" and "Censorship" that are each broken into four vague subcategories. It might be useful to create an entire section for "History" in order to go more in depth into the listed "journalists and bloggers" because right now their relevancy to the internet issue in Myanmar is lacking. This history section should also be considered to add after the lead section to provide context for the readers. This would allow the a brief summary of what has already been done for this issue and how Myanmar got to this point before discussing what it looks like today. I also think it would be beneficial to utilize more sources throughout the article. There are a substantial amount of resources listed but for instance in the subsection, "Recent reforms" there are only two resources cited; whereas the list in the "History" section has a different source for each bullet point. Alyssaamoreno (talk) 21:58, 22 March 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Peer Review