5/23/22, 2:07 AM Stay or go? Telenor’s Myanmar dilemma | Frontier Myanmar “Now, Telenor faces an extremely difficult dilemma, operating under an illegitimate regime that is hardly acknowledged by any other states,” said Marte Nilsen, a Myanmar researcher at the Norwegian Peace Research Institute (PRIO). Nilsen noted that while Telenor needs to follow the military’s orders to stay in business and offer an alternative to junta-controlled companies, sharing user data with the authorities could potentially put many people at risk. “Today, the democracy activists have either fled or they are hiding from the security forces. They [sleep] in different places from night to night, to avoid being arrested. Then you cannot risk that their mobile phone is revealing where they are,” said Nilsen. Although the company is increasingly unable to defy junta requests for sensitive user data, Telenor is still widely perceived as the safest of the four operators. State-owned MPT and military-linked Mytel are known to share data much more freely with the authorities, while Qatari firm Ooredoo has said little about the human rights situation in the country and has not pushed back publicly against internet shutdowns or website filtering. Possibly because of this perception, Telenor added two million new users in the first quarter of the year. One of those was Ko Naing Lin Myo (not his real name), a 23-year-old university student from Yangon who took part in protests against the coup. Prior to February he was an MPT customer, but as the military cracked down in March he grew more concerned that his calls could be monitored and switched to Telenor. “Many people say that Telenor is the safest – I feel that they put the security of their customers first,” he said. Even the parallel National Unity Government, formed by deposed lawmakers to fight back against the military regime, acknowledges the complexity of the issue – including the fact that a company’s staff would be at risk if it disobeyed the junta. “Companies such as Telenor have no choice but to follow these instructions due to security concerns,” said the NUG’s environment and natural resources minister, Tu Hkawng, to Nikkei Asia in a recent interview. Activist Ma Thinzar Shunlei Yi, who has been on the run since the regime put out a warrant for her arrest in April, said she agreed Telenor was likely the “safest” operator for users but the company needed to take more of a stand. “Telenor has invested under laws that violate human rights. Therefore, it has to shut down the internet if the military orders it to, and it also has to provide user information,” she said. “If Telenor receives directives that violate people’s digital rights, the ethical thing would be to cut ties with the military and leave the country.” Others call on Telenor to inform their users about the risks they face using their services. “Telenor has been committed to transparency, in stark contrast to the other mobile operators in Myanmar, but has been unable to continue acting with transparency following the attempted coup,” said Ma Yadanar Maung, spokesperson for Justice For Myanmar, an NGO committed to exposing the ties between international business and the military. “Telenor should clarify its position on the military’s interception system and the data they are disclosing to the junta.” Stay or go? Telenor declined to comment on whether, how often or what kind of user data it is sharing with the authorities. In a written comment sent to Danwatch and Frontier in early May, the company could not guarantee that the military does not have access to Telenor user data. “We are very concerned about the events of the last few months since the military coup on February 1. Unfortunately, it is no longer possible for us to comment on directives from the authorities, because we have to balance our desire for transparency with the safety of our employees,” Telenor’s information manager Mr Tormod Sandstø said in an email. Aggression and threats against Myanmar’s mobile phone companies, even holding employees protesting the military’s orders at gunpoint, have been reported by Reuters. Amid this danger – and plummeting revenue – there are some signs Telenor may leave Myanmar. On May 4, when the company announced its results for the first quarter of this year, it wrote down the value of its Myanmar business to zero – booking a loss of 6.5 billion krone, or US$782 million. https://www.frontiermyanmar.net/en/stay-or-go-telenors-myanmar-dilemma/ 3/9