Cuba to begin full internet access for mobiles
95 views · Published 11 December 2018 · 1:20 · Indexed 20 September 2026
Channel: AP Archive · 2018 · News & Politics
(5 Dec 2018) Cuban citizens on Wednesday welcomed the announcement that they will be offered full internet access for mobile phones starting this week. The announcement came late on Tuesday. Cuba would become one of the last nations to offer such service. President of the Cuban state telecom monopoly ETECSA, went on national television to say Cubans can begin contracting 3G service for the first time on Thursday. Until now, Cubans have had access only to state-run email accounts on their phones. The Cuban government has been building a 3G network in cities across the island and some tourists, Cuban government officials and foreign business people have had access to it for several years. But Cuban resident Maritza Enriquez, worried about the cost of the service. The new service will cost about 10 cents per megabyte, with packages ranging from 600 megabytes for about seven US dollars to four gigabytes for about 30 dollars. Those prices are roughly in line with global standards but still out of reach for many Cubans who subsist on state salaries of about 30 US dollars a month. Cuba authorized home internet in 2017 and hundreds of public Wi-Fi connection points have opened in parks and plazas around the country. The government opened state-run internet cafes in 2013, joined by wi-fi sites two years later. The number of sites has grown to more than 800. Twenty-six-year-old Leonardo Martines, a graphic designer, said he worried about the quality of the new service. The communist-governed island has one of the world's lowest rates of internet use but that has been expanding rapidly since Presidents Barack Obama and Raul Castro declared detente in 2014. Expansion has not slowed with President Donald Trump's partial rollback of relations. The Cuban internet is mostly uncensored but the government blocks a small number of sites like the US-funded Radio and Television Marti networks and others that advocate for systematic change on the island. Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork Twitter: https://twitter.com/AP_Archive Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/APArchives Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/APNews/ You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/youtube/6005348746d9cd7d64855639a11533e1
