Sophia Crabbe-Field

Big Tech companies like Meta, Amazon, and Twitter dominate our headlines, but telcos actually wield more power. While Facebook’s impacts on the Rohingya crisis in Myanmar are well documented, two other powerful tech companies were also deeply entrenched in the country’s political affairs: international telecom operators Ooredoo and Telenor. As the country returned to military rule after a 2021 coup, both companies reported being asked to spy on citizens and shut down the internet. They exited the market in 2022, but not before embroiling themselves in further controversy, over the fate of their users’ data and the safety of their employees.

To people in many democratic countries, telcos may seem like the benign infrastructure needed to access the social media sites upon which the real battles over our information systems are being waged. This is not the case in places across the globe where respect for, and protection of, human rights is lacking. Telcos are often compelled, under authoritarian and authoritarian-leaning regimes, to carry out everything from surveillance to communication blackouts, and the blocking of key services and websites.