April 15.
Since all GSM phone lines in Chin State and Kalay Townships were outages for about 3 days starting from the morning of April 11, the price of a MEC SIM card that can make phone calls has risen to 170,000 kyats in Kalay. MPT lines have been restored in some Chin State and Kalay Townships since the evening of April 14, according to a local resident of Kalay.
“I can’t use the MEC line anymore. I can only make phone calls. The price has gone up because I’m not interested in the difficulties and doing business. MPT phone lines and Wifi have been restored since 8pm on April 14,” said a Kalay resident. “In Tetin, we had to go to a place where we had a phone line in the other country to use the line. All SIM cards and Wifi were out. I know that you can make phone calls with MEC in Kalay, but it’s not working in Tetin,” a Tetin resident wrote on Facebook.
Since the morning of April 11, all GSM phones in Kalay Township and Chin State, including MPT, Oreedoo, Atom, and Mytel, have been out of service, causing residents to be unable to transfer money and communicate with the outside world.
“We couldn’t buy a MEC sim card either. So, when MPT came online, the first thing we did was sign in to KBZ Pay. The MPT line was out of service before now, so it was a big problem for online payments because the OPT code didn’t work,” said a resident of Kalay.
MPT said on Facebook that the outage in Kalay and Chin State towns was due to the damage to the MPT fiber optic cable in Ye U Township and is currently being repaired.
Military aircraft have been flying frequently over Tedim town in recent days, bombing the villages of Saing Zang and Mual Bin, but there have been no airstrikes since, according to Facebook posts by Tedim residents.