Communication Facilities Lacking In Myanmar

[george]

Communication facilities lacking in Myanmar

Maesai border (Thailand): -- As the first India-Asean car rally crossed over to Thailand, the participants made a bee-line at the telephone counter and many heaved a sigh of relief when their mobile phones started working since most of them had not been able to call home from Myanmar.

Though the authorities had made efforts to provide telephone and fax facilities for the rallyists at most night halts, there was no guarantee that calls would get through.

There was no uniform billing system and the cost of a call varied from USD 2 to USD 6 at various places depending upon the service provider.

Internet was limited to big cities and was under strict government control. No one could access free e-mail sites and tourists had to get a new ID from the state-owned service provider at a cost of USD 8 if they had to send mail.

Journalists, who managed to send stories from Mandalay, the country's second largest city, had to allow authorities to go through their stories and one of the Indian scribes was even asked to write in English and not in Hindi before the fax could be sent.

The satellite vehicle and the GPRS unit, keeping track of all the vehicles in the convoy, had problems functioning as they could not connect to the satellite consistently and even satellite phones carried by the organisers were not working in the hilly regions of the country.

-- PTI 2004-11-29