Telephone

International phone calls can be arranged at the Central Telephone & Telegraph Office at the corner of Ponsodan and Mahabandoola Streets in Yangon. International Direct Dial calls are also available at most hotels and at many public call offices (often a phone in a shop), but they are expensive, e.g. a call to the US costs US$6-7 per min. As of 2010, the only mobile telephone network is the MPTGSM network provided by the Myanmar Government's Post and Telecommunication agency. This works on the GSM900 band, so is visible to multi-band GSM phones. However, MPT has no international roaming arrangements, so manual attempts to connect to the network are refused. If your own mobile telephone can detect the MPTGSM network, then you may be able to buy a US$20 SIM card which will work for 28 days.

Mail

International mail out of Myanmar is reportedly quite efficient. As elsewhere, there is always a risk if you send valuables as ordinary parcels.

A hotel in Yangon has claimed postcards mailed in the country had less than a 1 % chance of being delivered abroad, though this is contradicted by the experiences of many travelers.

Internet

Internet is now widely and cheaply available in Yangon, Mandalay and Bagan, but more limited elsewhere. However access is very slow and many sites are inaccessible. Rates are around 300 kyat/hour in Yangon and 1000-3000 kyat/hour elsewhere. Some hotels, although rare, allow free access to the internet.

A list of proxys to circumvent blocks can be found at proxy.org .

Webmail: most free webmail providers are blocked, however many Internet cafés circumvent this - jot down the workaround in case it's still unknown in the next café you visit. If one Internet café can't connect you, the next one probably will the next day. As of January 2010, Hotmail and Yahoo are blocked, while Gmail is available.

As of May 2006, the following workarounds worked:

Yahoo - use wap.oa.yahoo.com - the WAP (mobile phone) gateway, which gets you the basic interface.

Myanmar has two ISPs, MPT and Bagan. Proxy sites are blocked by MPT, but may work with the Bagan ISP.