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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 was all set to rag on them for only having 'thousands', when the article stated Hundreds of thousands. Big difference. Most people I know have thousands of dollars in the bank - rent cost more than 1 thousand, after all. But not many people have hundreds of thousands.
Hundreds of thousands means they actually are letting every day Cubans use the internet, rather than just government officials.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Welcome to the club.
Have gnu, will travel.
That's an interesting assumption to make. Would Cuba do something like what the Norks have done, right from having their own distro of Linux to making their entire internet an intranet? Whereas the Chinese and North Koreans gradually developed that over the last 2 decades, in Cuba's case, it would have to be put together overnight to be a uniquely Cuban solution, as opposed to a Chinese solution overlaid on a Cuban marketplace
I do think that Cuba will reform, not just b'cos Fidel is dead, but also b'cos Obama is out in a week, and Trump could pretty much give the US based Cubans what they want. The trick for Raul would be how to transfer power peacefully while still securing his future prosperity and not getting tried for human rights abuses like a Pinochet or a Che
Thousands of North Koreans now have Internet access.
That's roughly an equivalence.
Except N.K. is a much more expensive air flight, so gets fewer tourists.
You are fooling yourself if you think you have unrestricted access to the internet pretty much anywhere. There are things the government doesn't want people to have/see/etc. Justified the government may be or not the FBI routinely raids places foreign and domestic. They are seizing domain names. They are hacking places as well now. Censorship comes in many forms and it's not just blacklists or white lists you need be worried about. I don't believe you can justify the shut down of communications. Even botnets and spam.
The good news is that the Cuban government isn't blocking access to websites, and that smartphones are becoming more widely available, but the absence of alternatives to ETECSA means that costs are likely to remain prohibitive for the vast majority of Cubans for the foreseeable future.
Cuba will reform now that Castro is dead. Slowly but surely.
You mean like North Korea is slowly but surely reforming since Kim 1st died?
Eh, if the trade sanctions go away, Cisco and other American companies would love to sell Cuba a great firewall of their own, as long as Cuba can pay for it.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Y cuáles son estos "gatos de LOL?"
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.
It probably exists but in more obscure manner. I guess they actually have the capability to monitor all activities but then again the same is being done by many Western agencies as recent scandals reveal. But for most Cubans the problem is high cost relative to income and slow speed. When I was in Cuba, I couldn't access my gmail.com hosted personal email, ironically due to USA embargo rules.
I went to Cuba in 2008 and stayed in several casa particulares - real peoples homes - and those who had internet had no censorship issues that they discussed with me. We even went onto the FBI and White House websites for a laugh.
Good luck with your rage, btw.