Myanmar (Burma) — Can you connect to the Internet in Myanmar (Burma)?

Getting online in Myanmar (Burma)

March 2015

Could I get online in Myanmar (Burma) in 2015?

The short answer was, yes, I could. However…

Although it was slow, I could easily connect to the Internet on my phone.

3G coverage was available and was pretty good in the cities and suburbs. The ‘roaming’ deal I had with my phone company was not good, and most days I exceeded my limit around 11 am, after which the connection would ‘throttle’ and then die entirely around mid to late afternoon.

Wi-Fi in the hotels was useable but very, very slow and sometimes didn’t work at all.

I had heard that there was Internet censorship in Myanmar (Burma). I am uncertain whether I encountered it.

I did notice that Evernote often refused to connect, which was odd and annoying. I think the failed connections were due to the size of the entries I was trying to move (I use Evernote for blogging, and notes regularly exceed 90 MB once I have added the photos). The connection did seem better when I was using VPN, but again it was slow.

Dropbox was also slow; I think this was due to the large image files I was moving.

When I visited Myanmar, Facebook was very popular, connections were surprisingly fast, and it seemed to work everywhere. The popularity of Facebook was a surprise. Everyone seemed to be on it all the time. I was uncertain whether Facebook’s popularity was due to it being genuinely liked or because it was one of the services in Myanmar (Burma) that consistently worked and was relatively fast.

I had heard that Twitter was banned. I was told by several people I met in Myanmar (Burma) that it was, and yet I was able to connect easily to read and post Tweets.

So, in conclusion, yes, you can use and connect to the Internet in Myanmar (Burma); however, connections are patchy, and when you do connect, it is slow. Don’t think about trying to move large files!