By Gwladys Fouche
OSLO (Reuters) – The Norwegian government is unable to prevent a transfer of customer metadata from telecoms operator Telenor’s Myanmar unit to the Asian country’s military rulers, Norway’s industry minister said on Wednesday.
Several institutional investors in Telenor are seeking assurances from the company that customer data will be protected following the sale of its operations in Myanmar.
Telenor is majority-owned by the Norwegian state. The industry ministry is in charge of overseeing the state’s shareholding in the company.
“As owner of a telecoms company with a subsidiary in Myanmar we can not prevent that metadata ends up in the hands of the military regime,” Industry Minister Jan Christian Vestre told the Norwegian parliament.
Telenor believes a sale of the Myanmar unit is the least bad outcome, he added.
Myanmar’s military rulers have given the go-ahead for a local company, Shwe Byain Phyu, to own most of Telenor’s business in the Southeast Asian country, under a deal to be finalised soon, Reuters reported on Friday.
Some human rights groups have said the handover could put the data of 18 million people within the junta’s reach, with several demonstrations held in Myanmar in recent days calling on Telenor to stop the sale altogether.
(Reporting by Gwladys Fouche, editing by Terje Solsvik)
