Illegal wireless access and local corruption underscore telecommunication challenges

February 8, 2013

HURFOM: High atop Dey Byu Mountain in an area controlled by the New Mon State Party, the predominant ethnic Mon resistance group, a solitary transmitter picks up wireless signals from Thai cellular broadcast towers across the nearby border. For several years, this single receiver and the “cellular repeater” devices connected to it have provided the majority of area residents with cheap wireless phone service.

Black market purveyors and residents’ friends and family living in Thailand can buy “minutes” on phone cards purchased in shops or, for more technologically savvy consumers, online. The cards are then circulated in villages back in Burma, allowing local people to continue tapping into the diverted wireless signals. In addition to these service costs, residents claim that they also have to pay monthly “phone taxes” to members of the local Military Intelligence Bureau and law enforcement in exchange for permission to connect to the wireless signals.

Local users allege that, although they have been forced to pay taxes on their illegitimate wireless access for years, the payments do not in turn equate to the phones being considered “legal.” In fact, the same authorities who collect the taxes advise users to turn off and hide their phones should more senior officials come for an inspection. For this reason, locals in Han Gan Village were prepared when, on February 1, unfamiliar members of the Military Intelligence Bureau arrived to seize “illegally operated” wireless phones. The visiting authorities confiscated three phones and ordered the local cellular repeater tower to be deactivated.

“We have to pay 10,000 Kyat every month, but we also still have to worry that the authorities will come and shut down our phones,” said a wireless user from Duya Village. “We pay, but our phone is still classified as ‘illegal.’ After hearing that other villages were being checked [for illegal wireless use], we turned off the phone and hid it. This is the only way we can continue to use our phones once the authorities leave.”

In Ye City, residents reported that they were sometimes asked to pay the monthly phone tax twice. They said that people describing themselves as members of the Military Intelligence Bureau recently came to their homes to collect the tax they had already paid that month. Without presenting any official identification, the purported authorities threatened to arrest the residents and take them to the bureau office if they failed to pay.

“They came to our house dressed like civilian people, no uniforms, and asked us to pay them,” said a wireless phone owner in Ye. “We refused, because we have already experienced this situation before. We never received a document guaranteeing that we can legally use the phone, even though we pay the tax. They should give us a [receipt] to prove that we already paid but they give us nothing. When we heard that they tried to arrest some phone owners, we shut our phone off the night before they arrived.”

She added that, while her family does pay the tax, she does not know where the money goes and doubts that upper-level authorities ever see the revenue.

Despite the corruption and illegality inherent in the system, many people in border communities still prefer it to paying the much higher cost of satellite phone services offered in rural Burma. Members of the migrant worker community are particularly reliant on the Thai signals to communicate with their families in Burma, noting that one minute of talk time costs 200 kyat with Thai providers compared to 600 kyat back home.

Before now, the practice rarely met with much concern because Thai companies profited from the phone card sales, consumers valued the low cost service, and local authorities in Burma cashed in on taxes. However, the country’s series of stated reforms include increased anti-corruption measures and boosts to telecommunication investment, making some domestic companies and members of parliament eager to eliminate the custom.

Written by HURFOM · Filed Under News