IT IS often said that in Myanmar, you don't have the Internet. You have Facebook.

That folksy view of the Internet may mask the fact that since 2016, an estimated 90 per cent of the country's 54 million people have been armed with a basic smartphone to connect with one another online.

The investments pouring in from countries such as Japan, Qatar and Norway have translated into new, tall, cell towers poking into the skies in the country's rural outskirts.