Netflix Now Available In Cuba

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Netflix Now Available In Cuba

Posted by samzenpus on Monday February 9, 2015 @07:03AM from the binge-away dept.

aBaldrich writes Streaming video service Netflix will be available to Cuban customers starting today, at the $7.99 U.S. per month rate that it offers in the U.S., the company announced today. It'll still require an international payment method for now, as well as Internet access (which still isn't ubiquitous in [Cuba]), but it's an early start that Netflix says it wanted to offer in order to have it available as Cuban Internet access expands, and debit and credit cards become more available to Cuban citizens. Until now, Cubans have had little access to this kind of American entertainment. The U.S. government maintains a floating balloon tethered to an island in the Florida Keys that broadcasts the pro-democracy TV Marti network. The Cuban government constantly jams the signal. "Cuba has great filmmakers and a robust arts culture, and one day we hope to be able to bring their work to our global audience," Reed Hastings, the company's co-founder and chief executive officer, said in the statement.

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Right on time... by hcs_$reboot · 2015-02-09 07:07 · Score: 2

now that Better Call Saul starts to be available on (some) Netflix!

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Hmmm .... by gstoddart · 2015-02-09 07:08 · Score: 3, Insightful

Available to Cubans with access to broadband, and international payment methods.
So, Raul and Fidel?
Do you have any idea how much $7.99/month is to an average Cuban? More than what they make.
I'm afraid the douchiness of NetFlix making this announcement is mind-boggling as it seems so disconnected from reality as to be absurd.
I fear Cuba isn't ready for the influx of crap this kind of thing is going to do to its society. And no matter what the idealists say, you can't magically turn their economy into a modern thing without causing more damage than you fix.
The "free market" as they'll see it will eat them alive, I'm afraid.

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1. Re:Hmmm .... by alvinrod · 2015-02-09 07:25 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  According to an article in the Havana Times the average salary in Cuba (as of 2012) was ~$22 based on a report released by the Cuban government. A few other sources from a quick Google search were in the same ballpark so I'll assume that's reasonable.
  
  So Netflix is roughtly 1/3 of an average monthly salary, which is still a considerable amount, but I would imagine that given the limited access to internet there, the cost of Netflix is hardly the largest barrier.
  
  The "free market" as they'll see it will eat them alive, I'm afraid.
  I suspect that the U.S. removing embargoes and trading with Cuba will do a lot to improve their economy. The tourism industry is also likely to see a lot of growth. I don't see how this will "eat them alive" though.
2. Re:Hmmm .... by Anonymous Coward · 2015-02-09 07:25 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  Cubans are making around $14/month (police and military are at $21/month. That's a USD amount. They also receive food ration vouchers. All other monies are tips from tourists, favors, etc. It's still above the poverty line, but $7.99 for Netflix? Yeah, sure.
3. Re:Hmmm .... by Ravaldy · 2015-02-09 07:35 · Score: 2
  
  First the infrastructure needs to be put in place. This will happen through the wealthier asking to get better internet access. Facilities such as vacation resorts will also invest in said technology to improve their customers experience.
4. Re:Hmmm .... by gstoddart · 2015-02-09 07:50 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  According to an article in the Havana Times [havanatimes.org] the average salary in Cuba (as of 2012) was ~$22 based on a report released by the Cuban government.
  Then I would say it is considerably up from what Cubans told me it was ... but, I'll take it on face value since it's not completely out of whack.
  
  The tourism industry is also likely to see a lot of growth.
  The Cuban tourism indust already represents about 60% of GDP, and has done so for a long time. A lot of their infrastructure is more or less at capacity, and isn't going to scale well.
  Last I was there, they'd doubled the size of the Juan Gomez airport in Varadero ... and they were so over-run that the airport had been reduced to pure chaos -- they had dozens more flights than they could handle. And the resorts themselves didn't know when they were getting huge influxes of people and were unprepared for it. So all of a sudden they had a few hundred people showing up and no rooms for them.
  
  I don't see how this will "eat them alive" though.
  Well, I can give you some examples ...
  Cuba still has a fair amount of people who are little above dirt poor. They have health care, and schooling, but often not much else. Which means there's a lot of pan-handling. For years people have been told to bring toiletries and the like, because the Cubans can't buy them ... over the last few years, they've become much more aggressively looking for cash.
  The tourism trade has been suffering from a larger amount of outright scams since I've been going -- last I was there I bought a bunch of MP3 CDs, most of which turned out to be blank. They're not even trying any more. They're just getting more brazen and saying "fuck it".
  Your average Cuban lines up along the side of the road to get a ride from one city to another to work ... and the broke down buses they are on versus the ones the tourists are on are really demonstrating that it's a 3rd world country.
  A lot of the most educated people in Cuba work on the resorts ... because you get paid more as a bar tender than you do as an engineer in Cuba.
  Start bringing large corporations trying to sell them crap they don't need, and they'll be diverting some of their limited money to crap like NetFlix. Corporations like Coca Cola will put their own domestic industries out of buisiness.
  Cuba's biggest draw is its beaches, and in many places they're already at capacity and becoming full of garbage as the tourists throw their plastic cups and cigarette butts around. There's only so much beach.
  When I say it will eat them alive, I'm saying if you had a sudden increase of even more tourists, they're simply not going to be able to keep up with it. Service and quality will go down across the board -- in fact, I'll argue it already has.
  Start importing even more social problems like drugs, or even more widespread prostitution, and things will get worse for them.
  Cuba is a small country, with limited resources, and a fairly fragile economy. It simply isn't going to survive a rapid transition without some serious pain, and it might be pain which they don't recover from.
  Too much change, too rapidly, and you could seriously make things FAR worse for many people.
  In my experience, in the last bunch of years, these things are already happening in Cuba. And, quite frankly, it's likely to keep getting worse.
  
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5. Re:Hmmm .... by Polo · 2015-02-09 07:53 · Score: 2
  
  Do you have any idea how much $7.99/month is to an average Cuban? More than what they make.
  But how many people can you piggyback on one account?
6. Re:Hmmm .... by gstoddart · 2015-02-09 08:03 · Score: 2
  
  What, like it does in the US where the "free market" lets them bring in TFWs and lower the wage?
  You'll excuse me if I think the notion of the free market doing anything to help anybody except corporations is complete and utter bullshit. The free market is a rigged game, and always will be.
  It doesn't do it in the first world, it sure as hell doesn't do it in developing nations.
  
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7. Re:Hmmm .... by gstoddart · 2015-02-09 08:22 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Weird you'd call the free market a rigged game, then ask for it to be rigged by adding in restrictions.
  No, what's weird is people continue to believe "free market" isn't a lie no matter where you are in the world, and continue to ascribe magical outcomes to what is essentially every greedy bastard optimizing his own greed, and has NOTHING to do with reality.
  The "free market" is an abstraction. And it's a complete fucking lie.
  Let's stop letting the game be rigged in favor of corporations so they can keep lying to us and stacking the odds in their favor -- let's finally realize the corporations are precisely WHY it's a rigged game.
  
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8. Re:Hmmm .... by jeffmeden · 2015-02-09 08:25 · Score: 2
  
  According to an article in the Havana Times [havanatimes.org] the average salary in Cuba (as of 2012) was ~$22 based on a report released by the Cuban government.
  Then I would say it is considerably up from what Cubans told me it was ... but, I'll take it on face value since it's not completely out of whack.
  
  The tourism industry is also likely to see a lot of growth.
  The Cuban tourism indust already represents about 60% of GDP, and has done so for a long time. A lot of their infrastructure is more or less at capacity, and isn't going to scale well.
  Last I was there, they'd doubled the size of the Juan Gomez airport in Varadero ... and they were so over-run that the airport had been reduced to pure chaos -- they had dozens more flights than they could handle. And the resorts themselves didn't know when they were getting huge influxes of people and were unprepared for it. So all of a sudden they had a few hundred people showing up and no rooms for them.
  The nice thing about Tourism as an industry is that scale only relates to demand (see winter vs summer demand in Florida as an example of how this already works). Too many tourists? Double the room rates. Double the restaurant prices. Double the airfare. No, triple it! A new horde of US tourists surging demand in Cuba will just drive up prices. Even crappy hotels have no problem accommodating for supply vs demand by racing up the price curve.
9. Re:Hmmm .... by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · 2015-02-09 08:34 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  You'd be surprised what a free people will do once oppressive government is removed from their backs.
  I went to Jamaica in 2001, and all those poor, poor Jamaicans running the tourist nick nack stalls had cell phones.
  A free people will bust ass to acquire the good stuff. How patronizing are many posts in this thread, suggesting this is a bad thing.
  What it really suggests is an overbearing government is bad for many reasons, and that there's a hell of a lot more to freedom than freedom of speech.
  
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10. Re:Hmmm .... by CrimsonAvenger · 2015-02-09 08:52 · Score: 2
  
  You'd be surprised what a free people will do once oppressive government is removed from their backs.
  So, what exactly leads you to believe that Cubans are about to get "oppressive government removed from their backs"?
  No, Obama opening up relations with Cuba isn't going to accomplish that.
  
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11. Re:Hmmm .... by drinkypoo · 2015-02-09 09:00 · Score: 2
  
  According to an article in the Havana Times the average salary in Cuba (as of 2012) was ~$22 based on a report released by the Cuban government.
  Great, now what's the median salary? Cuba has great disparity of wealth just like everywhere else.
  
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12. Re:Hmmm .... by SuiteSisterMary · 2015-02-09 09:19 · Score: 2
  
  Temporary Foreign Workers.
  
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13. Re:Hmmm .... by JPyObjC+Dude · 2015-02-09 09:42 · Score: 2
  
  I know many Cubans and I agree that $8 per month is a large portion of a monthly salary so unless the Cuban customer has an external source of income, it will be very difficult under normal conditions. However, there is a very large portion of the population with family outside of the country which funnels in money and the Cubans getting that money have more than enough money to buy this service.
  For those that can get a dependable connection and I can see them paying for the service by hosting a black market movie theater in their living rooms for $0.50 a seat. Its possible that they can sell 10 seats in their living room and make $5 USD a showing. Maybe even people in a neighborhood will have a co-op and share the monthly cost.
  The biggest issue in Cuba is internet infrastructure or lack thereof. I have spent time in some big Cuban cities and they are lucky to have a telephone let alone an internet connection. The only Cubans with internet that I know worked for the government and the connection, which worked a fraction of the time, was at the government offices.
14. Re:Hmmm .... by puto · 2015-02-09 09:51 · Score: 2
  
  I have worked on and off in Cuba for the last ten years, their workforce is not literate compared to the rest of the world as far as computer literacy and general knowledge is concerned. You sound a bit racist and under educated.
  
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15. Re:Hmmm .... by strong_epoxy · 2015-02-09 10:32 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  That 'lie' built you. Everything from the clothes on your back to the computer you're typing on, the Internet, food, and your home came from the free market.
  Making up god damn lies and hating them is a path to destruction. Seek help.
Sigh. by Anonymous Coward · 2015-02-09 07:12 · Score: 2, Interesting

Another ruination of a non-Americanised culture begins, and the homogenisation continues. Great if you like the One True God, but pretty shit if you are interested in pretty much any other option.
Those "pro-democracy" activists who get involved in pirate networks like Marti (N.B. it's "piracy" precisely when a government doesn't like it - just as it would be if I blasted a social-democratic propaganda station from an offshore vessel close to New York, say) do not really represent Cuba, btw. They represent the displaced upper-middle classes of Cuba who benefitted from the serfdom that existed prior to Castro - who, though politicians pretend to forget it, was a significant improvement on what came before.
Yes, there is a wealth of powerful, moving Cuban culture. It exists because Cuba is not another satellite of the USA - yet.
1. Re:Sigh. by Major+Blud · 2015-02-09 08:28 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  If the US embargoes Cuba, they're being imperialistic. If the US decides to do business with them, they are going to ruin their culture and make it another satellite. Talk about "damned if you do, damned if you don't".
  
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2. Re:Sigh. by Major+Blud · 2015-02-09 09:43 · Score: 2
  
  "The fact that you have talked about dissemination of culture in terms of 'doing business'"
  The whole point of the embargo was to prevent US businesses from doing trade with Cuba. So the solution is to maintain it so that Cuban culture can be protected?
  How has opening a Ford dealership in France or an Apple Store in Italy stifled their culture? Not much based off of the last visit I had. Do you expect this to be different for Cuba?
  Besides, free speech and personal freedom are cultural attributes worth sharing, is it not? The implementation of this in the USA is debatable, but the best way to share those attributes is through exchange of ideas enabled through international trade and openness. The only other way is through armed conflict, and we can see how well that worked out in their past conflicts.
  
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Re:Now they can watch "the interview" by NotDrWho · 2015-02-09 07:27 · Score: 2

If you think that's bad, wait until we deploy the WWE and Nascar apps.

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SubjectsInCommentsAreStupid by lesincompetent · 2015-02-09 07:32 · Score: 3, Insightful

As a non-american still not reached by netflix despite living in a very first world country my reaction can only be ohfo'ffuck'ssake!
I hope you understand my frustration.
Re:So we have fat ignorant and narcissistic by mi · 2015-02-09 07:33 · Score: 2, Interesting

So we have fat ignorant and narcissistic Cubans to look forward to in a few years. GG capitalism.
Uhm, no. If the current clique is allowed to rule America for much longer, there will be lean and cautious people talking in hints and reading between the lines on both sides of the straits.
GG Socialism!

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Bandwidth? by HouseOfMisterE · 2015-02-09 07:35 · Score: 2

Do they have Internet bandwidth available for this in Cuba?
Let the MSM advertise your business for free by Chess_the_cat · 2015-02-09 07:50 · Score: 2

Seems like this is more of a PR move. Netflix grabs a few headlines courtesy the MSM and Cuba gets Netflix in theory but not in practice.

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Re:Commies..... by mi · 2015-02-09 07:54 · Score: 2

Which means free food, housing, medical care....all the bare necessities of life are provided by the government.
Yes, in exchange for 100% taxation and not being free to leave (even moving to a different town within Cuba requires police' permission).
Which is precisely the deal, slaves were getting on plantations. The fools weren't happy with that for some reason...

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