34 Brooten, McElhone and Venkiteswaran Shwe Mann, the former chairman of the lower house in parliament from the military-backed USDP — Toe Naing Mann and Aung Thet Mann — founded the second private internet service provider, RedLink Communications, in 2008.14 In 2013, after the sector was liberalized, two foreign private companies entered the market: Norway’s Telenor AS and Qatar ’s Ooredoo QSC. In January 2017 a fourth licence was awarded to a joint venture between Vietnam’s military-run Viettel and two local companies, one of which belongs to the Myanmar army (Reuters 2017). By the end of 2016 there were more than fifteen internet service providers in the country (Internet in Myanmar 2016). State-run Media For a long time the military was the state in Burma. More recently, however, the state-run media have come under the control of the government, and they need to be considered separately from the military-run media. In the print sector the government owns two national dailies — the Myanmar-language Kyemon (The Mirror) and Myanma Alinn — and has a joint venture with Global Direct Link to run the English-language Global New Light of Myanmar. The government runs and manages the state broadcaster MRTV as well as a variety of state-private joint ventures. Its most notable broadcast joint ventures are with Skynet, started in 2010 and owned by Shwe Than Lwin Media Co Ltd, and with Forever Group, which has run MRTV-4 since 2004 (Nwe Nwe Aye 2012).15 The government also runs AM radio stations and has joint ventures with a variety of companies that run FM stations, including Zaykabar Co, Shwe Taung Group of Companies and Htoo Group of Companies (Nwe Nwe Aye 2012). The five companies awarded two-year digital television channel contracts in April 2017 to run joint ventures with the Ministry of Information include DVB Multimedia Co Ltd, Mizzima Co Ltd, Young Investment Group Co Ltd, Fortune International Co Ltd and Kaung Myanmar Aung Co Ltd. The military publishes two dailies — the national Myawaddy Daily and the Yadanabone Daily in Mandalay — and owns its own television channel, Myawaddy, and radio station, Thazin FM (Nwe Nwe Aye 2012). It also publishes several magazines. 01 ch1-MyanmarMediaIT-5P.indd 34 8/4/19 10:29 am