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OSLO: Norwegian telecom operator Telenor said on Monday (February 15) that concerns for the safety of its employees had prevented it from including forced internet shutdowns in Myanmar following the February 1 military coup.
READ: Myanmar experiences ‘near total internet shutdown’
While the board has repeatedly forced ISPs to shut down or restrict access since taking power, Telenor attempted transparency by listing orderly outages on its website.
But he posted on Sunday that “it is currently not possible for Telenor to release the directives we receive from the authorities” in Myanmar, adding that “we deeply regret that the list on this site is no longer updated.”
Spokeswoman Hanne Langeland Knudsen told AFP on Monday that “our general judgment of the situation now means that we are unable to communicate about the directives”, and said that the situation in Myanmar is “confusing and unclear” and that “the security of our employees have been a top priority from the beginning. “
Telenor has been active in Myanmar since 2014 and last year employed 747 people there.
Telecoms services are currently severely disrupted, with the UK-based monitoring group NetBlocks tweeting on Monday night that the country was under a “near-total internet shutdown” for the second night in a row.
READ: More protests after Myanmar military government cut internet and deployed troops
Repeated internet blackouts have not prevented thousands of people from taking to the streets in Myanmar’s main cities and remote towns alike, although generals on Monday deployed additional troops as the crackdown intensified.
