Thanlyin, Myanmar

How the Internet Reaches Thanlyin

Thanlyin is a port city in Myanmar's Yangon Region, situated on the eastern bank of the Bago River directly across from Yangon. Though part of the greater Yangon urban area, Thanlyin sits at its own distinct position on Myanmar's coast, hosting the country's largest port at Thilawa. This coastal position makes it a viable terminus for submarine cable infrastructure, and Thanlyin is one of only two submarine cable landing points in the entire country.

International internet traffic reaches Thanlyin through a single submarine cable, the UMO, which connects Myanmar directly to Singapore. All external internet traffic passing through this landing point travels along this one route, making Singapore the gateway through which Thanlyin's international connectivity flows.

The Cable Serving Thanlyin

The UMO cable spans 2,227 km and reached ready-for-service status in 2023. It connects Thanlyin to Tuas, Singapore, establishing a direct submarine link between Myanmar and one of Southeast Asia's principal internet exchange hubs. This relatively short cable by regional standards provides a focused, point-to-point route across the Andaman Sea and into the Strait of Malacca, placing Myanmar's Thanlyin terminus in direct communication with Singapore's densely interconnected network infrastructure.

Regional Context

Myanmar hosts just two submarine cable landing points across the country, with a total of two cables in service — the first of which entered service in 2017. Thanlyin is one of those two landing points, the other being Ngwe Saung, located on Myanmar's western Rakhine coast, which also serves a single cable. Thanlyin's position within the Yangon metropolitan area and its association with the Thilawa Special Economic Zone gives it particular significance within Myanmar's narrow submarine cable footprint. The country's average cable length across its two connections stands at approximately 13,614 km, a figure that reflects the contrasting scale of Thanlyin's relatively short UMO link versus the country's other connection.

What This Means for Connectivity

Because Thanlyin is served by a single submarine cable, all international internet traffic from this landing point flows exclusively through the UMO to Singapore. There is no cable-level redundancy at this terminus: any interruption to the UMO would sever the direct international link. Singapore, as the sole destination on this cable, functions as the transit point through which traffic from Thanlyin reaches the broader global internet.

Thanlyin's role as a single-cable, single-destination terminus illustrates a pattern common across Myanmar's submarine cable landscape — a country with very limited landing infrastructure spread across just two points on its coastline. Understanding this topology helps explain why the routing of internet traffic in and out of Myanmar remains tightly constrained compared to neighbouring countries with more distributed cable networks.