Slashdot Mirror
Thousands Of Cubans Now Have Internet Access (ap.org)
There's been a dramatic change in one of the world's least-connected countries. An anonymous reader quotes the AP:
Since the summer of 2015, the Cuban government has opened 240 public Wi-Fi spots in parks and on street corners across the country... The government estimates that 100,000 Cubans connect to the internet daily. A new feature of urban life in Cuba is the sight of people sitting at all hours on street corners or park benches, their faces illuminated by the screen of smartphones connected by applications such as Facebook Messenger to relatives in Miami, Ecuador or other outposts of the Cuban diaspora...
Cuban ingenuity has spread internet far beyond those public places: thousands of people grab the public signals through commercially available repeaters, imported illegally into Cuba and often sold for about $100 -- double the original price. Mounted on rooftops, the repeaters grab the public signals and create a form of home internet increasingly available in private rentals for tourists and cafes and restaurants for Cubans and visitors alike.
The article also points out that last month, for the first time ever, 2,000 Cubans began receiving home internet access.
Cuban ingenuity has spread internet far beyond those public places: thousands of people grab the public signals through commercially available repeaters, imported illegally into Cuba and often sold for about $100 -- double the original price. Mounted on rooftops, the repeaters grab the public signals and create a form of home internet increasingly available in private rentals for tourists and cafes and restaurants for Cubans and visitors alike.
The article also points out that last month, for the first time ever, 2,000 Cubans began receiving home internet access.
Would have voted "no" on this in the firehose. Guess that's why it didn't show up there.
I wonder how many of those HUNDREDS of thousands (no thanks to the title writer) have UNRESTRICTED access to the internet? It's of no use to people if the Government tells you what you can and cannot read. "There are thousands of books in the library. All of them are Mao's little red book."
I've been in Cuba dozens of times in the last fifteen years and I have never been unable to access a single web site. This is going back to when I used a dialup account from the apartment where I was living. Same was true when I used the U. of Havana computers, same is true using the government-sponsored wifi, same is true using hotel wifi. So let's just drop the whole "Cuban government internet censorship" meme, shall we? Since it's never existed.