Ban on cell phones lifted in Cuba
Ordinary Cubans will soon have the luxury of owning a cell phone, according to a story by the Associated Press.
President Raul Castro's government said Friday that it will allow anyone in the country to get cell phone service, a right previously limited to executives working for foreign companies or high communist party officials.
This is the first announcement that a major government policy or restriction has been changed since the 76-year-old Castro took over as leader of the island nation from his older brother Fidel Castro.
The AP said there has been a kind of black market for cell phones in Cuba where people who were ineligible were able to get phones and service by having foreigners sign contracts in their names. But for the most part, mobile phones are not common in Cuba.
The small wireless market in Cuba is a monopoly controlled by Empresa de Telecomunicaciones de Cuba S.A., or ETECSA. The company has said it will soon offer prepaid contracts to the general public now that the ban has been lifted.
But because most Cubans only make about 408 Cuban pesos, or a little less than $20, a month according to the AP, it's hard to imagine that many Cubans will be able to afford a cell phone. Still, even the poorest of the poor have managed to afford cell phones in other countries. I was amazed on my a recent trip to the Philippines that everyone I encountered, from housemaids to Bangka boat captains to street vendors, all had cell phones. The Philippines also happens to be considered the texting capital of the world.
It's also very hard for me to wrap my head around the fact that people in Cuba have simply not been allowed to own cell phones while the rest of the world has seen an explosion in cell phone usage and technology. In the U.S., more than 80 percent of the population owns a cell phone. And close to 3 billion people around the globe have cell phones.
Cuba isn't the only country loosening its cell phone ban. In North Korea, where people had been publicly executed for carrying a cell phone, the ban is also being lifted, according to Web reports.
The North Korean government imposed the cell phone ban after a 2004 explosion in the city of Ryongchon that was believed to be an assassination attempt on the communist country's leader, Kim Jong-Il.
North Korea's ban is somewhat ironic considering that its southern neighbor South Korea is one of the most sophisticated mobile phone markets in the world.
But for governments that are intent on keeping a tight lid on information coming in or going out of the their country, cell phones are a major threat.
After all, it has been through photographs and video taken on cell phones and circulated on the Internet that the world has seen the disturbing images of the riots in Tibet: the clouds of tear gas, burning buildings, monks in purple robes, and riot police. Cell phones were the primary way that news was leaked to the outside world during the crackdown in Burma last year. And in many places, cell phones have been used to gather protesters and distribute antigovernment messages.
Marguerite Reardon has been a CNET News reporter since 2004, covering cell phone services, broadband, citywide Wi-Fi, the Net neutrality debate, as well as the ongoing consolidation of the phone companies. E-mail Maggie. 
Investment in Cuba has been deteriorated for decades. Obama wants to regulate the economy, Fidel Castro could offer Obama some great advise on how to impose regulation effectively.
I hope one day this country we live in goes so far as to introduce price controls. Especially on gasoline, I cant wait to see deterioration of investment here at home. I tend to think Cali, and Oregon will be the first to pass such regulations.
Unfortunately, major US newspapers have also been fooled and bought into the propaganda by reporting the misinformation verbatim, not knowing or caring that their access to most of the Cuban population was severely restricted, and anyone to whom they spoke whilst in Cuba had to "toe the party line" or suffer reprisals against themselves and their families, so that their responses to questions about their lives were usually not true.
I have had many arguments with self-styled "experts on all things Cuban", whose only source of information is what they read in the newspapers. I can usually shut them up with one question - If life there is so wonderful, why are people willing to risk their own lives and that of their children to leave the country, and arrive at a foreign country with nothing except the clothes on their back? Would most American be willing to endure such a sacrifice?
Those of us that are old enough to remember a pre-communist Cuba, and have ACTUALLY LIVED in Cuba, before and after the revolution, know how a first world country (pre-revolution) was turned into a pitiful third world country thanks to the "great communist experiment" of Castro.
Sadly, he is revered in most of Latin America, not for his dubious "accomplishments" but for being one of very few who stood up to the United States, and actually won. I can only hope that if the US embargo is lifted, conditions for Cubans will improve, just like they have for the Chinese.
- How can they not afford cell phones?
- by dsirek March 31, 2008 6:21 AM PDT
- I thought communism was supposed to redistribute the wealth? Fidel was estimated to be worth $500 million in 2006, so why not divide that up amongst the 11+ million residents of Cuba?
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