Netflix Now Available In Cuba

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.

Comments

Hmmm ....

[gstoddart]

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.

Re:Hmmm ....

[alvinrod]

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.

Re:Hmmm ....

[gstoddart]

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.

Re:Hmmm ....

[gstoddart]

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.

Re:Hmmm ....

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

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.

Re:Hmmm ....

[strong_epoxy]

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.

SubjectsInCommentsAreStupid

[lesincompetent]

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:Sigh.

[Major Blud]

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".