February 2005, SMS users were being charged a monthly fee of 500 kyats, plus 10 kyats for each message. Scarce Resources According to an ITU questionnaire filled out by the MPT in January 2000, there is no national law governing spectrum management but consideration has been given to designing one with a request put in for technical assistance from the ITU and the APT (Asia-Pacific Telecommunity), especially since the only published regulations date back to 1958 on radio service and license requirements.28 There is a need to devise an appropriate method to calculate spectrum usage fees and to redeploy spectrum. Wireless networks are used for AMPS, CDMA, and GSM cellular systems and a DECT wireless access network, and also for seven 6-GHz analogue microwave systems with a maximum capacity of 960 channels each. These also serve as bearers to TV broadcasting in provincial towns, and together with UHF/VHF systems, provide subscriber trunk dialing services to 30 towns including Yangon. 29 In 2000 a new seven-digit call numbering system was introduced to facilitate national network expansion. Given the shortage of networks, not spectrum, satellite services are widely used. All domestic Vsat stations are connected to Shin Sat’s ThaiCom 3, and until Myanmar recently installed a landing station to the SEA-ME-WE3 submarine cable, all international calls were routed through one of two satellite earth stations. In 2002 Shin Sat concluded an agreement with Bagan Cybertech to provide the first iPSTAR (satellite-over-IP) gateway and 5,000 Vsat terminals to offer high-speed Internet access. Bagan Cybertech’s plan was to provide broadband services to government and commercial offices as well as access to rural areas, but since the fall of Prime Minister Khin Nyunt in 2004 the future of this venture remains uncertain. In March 2002 the MPT commercially launched the country's first GSM network in a BOT with Sky-Link. The service had been delayed for two years not because of technical difficulties due to spectrum allocation but because of conflicts among the shareholders.30 Partly because of the delay in implementation of the US$144m project, Brigadier General Win Tin, Minister for Telecommunications, Post and Telegraph, was sacked and replaced by Brigadier General Thein Zaw in May 2001. Thein Zaw found himself under scrutiny at the end of 2004 for charges of ‘excessive corruption’ (similar to those which brought down Khin Nyunt), regarding a number of major telecom contracts that allegedly involved massive kickbacks.31 28 The questionnaire can be accessed at http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/study_groups/SGP_19982002/JGRES09/pdf/myanmar.pdf 29 See Telecoms in Asia, 2003 Paul Budde Communications Pty Ltd, http://www.budde.com.au 30 The Ne Win family, sharing the patriarch’s mystical beliefs, appointed an astrologer as a SkyLink adviser with a monthly salary of 300,000 kyat to advise on auspicious moments and yedaya (means to counter fate). (BBC Monitoring Asia Pacific, 13 March 2002) 31 One of the contracts under review is a proposed deal with mainland mobile phone company ZTE. Under the contract, ZTE would provide a US$150 million loan for the infrastructure to provide 300,000 phone lines. But this is more than 10 times the real cost of the project, according to industry experts. Another ZTE contract for a million phone lines in another Southeast Asian country cost US$30 million. (South China Morning Post, 21 February 2005)