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Ye Naing Win was also the head of Bagan Cybertech and Maykha Technologies, an affiliate, before MI fell from grace last October.

 

A foreign source who previously conducted unsuccessful negotiations with high-ranking Burmese government officials in the hope of providing internet services in Burma, says any ISP—regardless of whether it is foreign or not—can only play ball with the generals if it is prepared to accept very strict rules of engagement.

 

Myanmar Posts and Telecommunications is said to insist that all internet operations in Burma be run from a central location to better facilitate monitoring. The Burmese government’s principle internet concern, though, is the control of its users “through a combination of price and location.”

 

Burma has remained one of the most expensive internet systems in the world since its inception four years ago, while most internet caf?s in Rangoon are concentrated within touching distance of downtown or in up market premises and neighborhoods—you won’t find an internet caf? near the National League for Democracy headquarters on Shwegonedine Road.

 

Like Bagan Cybertech, Teleglobe will also undoubtedly have to fill its top positions with foreign staff fluent in network construction and maintenance, as Burma has been completely devoid of any internet expertise among its own people until recently, when many were sent abroad to study IT, principally in Singapore and Malaysia.

 

Bagan Cybertech’s leading network experts are Karl Sumpter and Paul Crilley, both from England. The pair have been in Rangoon since the end of the 1990s and are believed to be the brains behind Burma’s development of the internet, according to their private emails.

 

“I am working in Burma…setting up the country’s first [read: government-controlled] ISP,” wrote Sumpter to a hardware supplier back in 1999.

 

He is currently Bagan Cybertech’s network operations manager and therefore responsible for the maintenance of the company’s firewall and filtering systems. Sumpter refused to speak to The Irrawaddy; Crilley was unavailable for comment.

 

Both are also believed to be responsible for seeing through Burma’s recent drive to further its internet service, a move which has resulted in high-level talks between one of the country’s chief infrastructure suppliers, Shin Satellite of Thailand, and Information Minister Brig-Gen Kyaw Hsan in Rangoon at the beginning of last month.