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Cuba Offers 3G Mobile Internet Access To Citizens (bbc.com)
Cuba's population is to be offered internet access via a 3G mobile network from later this week. From a report: Telecom provider Etecsa said citizens would be able to start subscribing to the service from Thursday. Until now, locals have mostly relied on wi-fi hotspots and internet cafes and the 3G service has been restricted to state-employed journalists and foreign businesses among others. This will change -- but many will still be unable to afford the new contracts. Etecsa's packages range from a month's use of 600MB of data for 7CUC ($7) to 4GB for 30CUC. Users get a bonus 300MB use of local .cu domain websites. But the average state wage for the island's 11.2 million residents is the equivalent of about $30 per month.
That's really not enough data to do anything of consequence, except deliver a small amount of propaganda to users' handsets. Congratulations on keeping it dictatorial, Cuba.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
will they push ios and android roms for data free?
att roaming is $2 a meg and $0.50 a text there
My donkey and my 56 Chevy can only use 2G though :(
What about net neutrality? This puts Facebook in disadvantage against the Cuban equivalent.
Not long ago, I read an article about how Cuban police will sometimes stop buses to search for contraband food. Is it endangered species they're after? Nope, extra cans of stuff we can legally get off the shelf for about $1 in our Oppressive, Reactionary, Sexist Hellhole.
And you thought checkpoints to make sure people aren't driving drunk or stoned were tyranny. Imagine the police sifting through your groceries to make sure you're not smuggling cans of beans, rice and meat.
This is why I have never understood why seemingly intelligent people point to Cuba and are astounded that they have "good healthcare." That's the natural outcome of what happens when you impoverish your people to that level and then give everyone with an above average IQ only a few state-approved employment choices in STEM. You are going to get a lot of doctors because in any "free society" many of those people would be engineers, scientists and others working in private industry that doesn't exist in Communist Cuba.
Cuban doctors sent to Brazil by their government have said they'd literally rather be trash collectors in Brazil where they're free to make their own choices in a non-totalitarian state than be medical professionals back home.
"7CUC ($7) " Whaa? A Cuban Ultrainflationary Commietoken is equivalent to one US Dollar? On the real world or according to the Cuban government's exchange rates (which nobody uses if they can avoid it and instead buy the commietokens they want from elsewhere). Or is CUC some special non-inflationary currency pegged to the dollar via actual currency reserves and available only to those animals in the farm born more equal than the others?
Cuba has two parallel currencies. The normal peso can't be legally exchanged for foreign currency, and is worth about 4 cents on the black market. The CUC can be converted, and is pegged one-to-one with the US dollar.
Many corrupt dictatorships have parallel currencies. The elite are paid in the convertible currency, which they can then sell on the black market for a huge profit (2500% in Cuba).
The fact that the 3G service described in TFA can only be bought with CUC means that normal people, paid in unconvertible pesos, can't use it unless they buy CUC on the black market at an exorbitant markup.
Marxist Utopia works better in theory than in practice.
Usually, even the "good" currency (aka the one not inflated as much as the "common" currency) isn't really pegged to any currency, and by that I mean it is not readily convertible back to US dollars by everyone who owns it, because the local communist dictatorship doesn't have enough currency reserves to support such a conversion at the semi-large scale. As such, even the "good" currency ends up in the black market, where tourists can buy it (with their USD) at a much more favourable rate than the official "pegged" rate.
Come on, "Anarchist Cookbook" is well below 300MB ;-)
Internet was already available in Cuba, just not through mobile connection. You would know where the hotspots are when you saw large number of people lost in their smartphones. Everywhere else you would see normal human interactions. Sadly with 3G the streets of Cuba may start to look just more like USA cities, with people interacting more with their phones, less with other people.
Teenagers should make an obligatory 2-week tour to Cuba to learn what it is like to live without everything they take for granted.
at less cost. How about that.