Thousands Of Cubans Now Have Internet Access (ap.org) 70
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.
Thousands of slashdotters (Score:2, Interesting)
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Exactly. The title is intentionally misleading.
THOUSANDS OF CUBANS already had Internet access.
Would the editor care to add a term like new or additional to clear things up, or am I going to have to reach my hands through the monitor and strangle the idiot?
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Exactly. The title is intentionally misleading.
THOUSANDS OF CUBANS already had Internet access.
Would the editor care to add a term like new or additional to clear things up, or am I going to have to reach my hands through the monitor and strangle the idiot?
Accurate is boring. The first rule of clickbait parrot club is never try to be accurate.
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"THOUSANDS OF CUBANS already had Internet access."
Which pales in comparison to the throughput of their thumbdrive sneakernet (or used to).
Good News, but ... (Score:1)
Let's see how long it takes for the government to start shutting down access to those that are accessing the "wrong" type of information. The Chinese government has a good model for how this oppression can work.
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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
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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.
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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?
Re:Good News, but ... (Score:5, Interesting)
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So let's get this straight. Your point is true when you lived in an apt, which is specifically built for people who enter the country to work there. It was true at the absolute elite places of education, it was true at those government-sponsored wifi locations which require specific access in rich areas. And it was true in the hotel that's built to cater to outsiders(again the rich elite). All while ignoring or burying your head in the sand that this doesn't apply to any of you, because you're the cater
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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.
Bad headline (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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I'm in Missouri and I pay ~$450.00/mo rent for a two bedroom apartment. I guarantee if you're somewhere like New York, you'd be paying $2500+ easily for the same space.
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And it has wheels if you ever need to move it.
Oh boy. Reminds me of the elitists in Toronto talking about their great apartments that cost $1500/mo and they have 350sqft. What's the difference between one in Toronto and Woodstock? $750/mo and 800sqft. And you still have to commute 2hrs every morning.
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Move to Barrie it's nice here and only a 1 hour commute. Toronto is a shit hole full of cunts anyways.
If I had to work in Toronto like I did nearly a decade ago I would. Last sentence is spot on as well, luckily I only need to drive in once every 3-4 months to see a neurologist for my spine. Gotta love that free healthcare. It's only a 2-hr trip from the southwestern part of the province, so there is that.
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You're actually a paid troll from Breitbart, aren't you? To make the left look bad in online forums.
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Hundreds of thousands means they actually are letting every day Cubans use the internet, rather than just government officials.
Cubans have been allowed to use the Internet for many years already. It is (or was) very expensive, but if they could pay they could access it. They also have a sneakernet which they use to share files (movies) with flash drives.
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Yes, Cuba is a very popular vacation destination for Canadians, and while I have not been there myself, the people I know who go there regularly often stock up on flash drives to take along and give out as gifts.
Dialup? (Score:1)
gotta love that 110 baud rs-232 connection.
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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 botnet
Easier ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Welcome to the club.
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North Koreans (Score:1)
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.
Internet access in Cuba (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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Yes, the public access points make it easier to connect, but there is only a single ISP: the Cuban national telecommunications monopoly, ETECSA. To use the Internet, you must buy their scratch-off cards at their offices, which involves waiting in line. You can then use them on your own devices or at the aging Windows machines at ETECSA's centers. The cost of access has dropped to $1.50/hour, but that's a lot of money in a country where the average monthly income is $25. If you are associated with one of the universities, particularly the Universidad de Ciencias Informaticas west of Havana, Internet access is reasonably good (and free), but outside of that, only about 4% of Cubans connect to the Internet. Others get information from "The Packet", whose managers download and assemble materials, including books, movies, news, etc., onto electronic media and make it available to all.
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.
Sounds like figuring out a way to provide uncensored and free wireless internet access to Cubans by bypassing ETECSA would be a great project. I'm not really knowledgeable enough in this area to offer more than random ideas. Maybe crowd-sourcing the money for satellite internet? Relay ships in international waters off the Cuban coast? I know both of those are rather impractical and expensive, so does anyone have some actually good/practical ideas that might work?
Strat
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provide uncensored and free wireless internet access to Cubans
Who told you it was censored?
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How about "monitored, with a high probability of being 'disappeared', murdered, or simply arrested & imprisoned for visiting the 'wrong' kind of sites
A bit better, but who told you that kind of things happen in Cuba?
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Besides history books, there were also the stories I was told directly from Cubans in Florida who had escaped the Castro regime. I lived in FL in the '70s.
Strat
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Cubans in Florida who had escaped the Castro regime. I lived in FL in the '70s.
This is Testimony from cold-war era. I am certain nobody could had trouble for looking up a web site at that time, since the web did not exist,.
Beside this, if you look for fresher witnesses, it is easy to find people that went to Cuba recently for tourism and could speak freely with cuban people. This is not North Korea, you know...
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I am certain nobody could had trouble for looking up a web site at that time, since the web did not exist,.
You attempt to deflect. It was then, and remains now, a dictatorship run by Fidel and now his brother Raul who operate domestically as most dictatorships of those type always have. Any changes have been mostly a matter of degree for now but could change at their whim. Just because, for now, they are not engaging in extreme and overt oppression/pacification tactics does not mean anything has changed in principle.
it is easy to find people that went to Cuba recently for tourism and could speak freely with cuban people.
The same is true in China. You can tour the Great Wall and other sights. One can vacation in Russ
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You attempt to deflect
Indeed I do, but not the way you think. My point is not to defend Cuba's political regime, but to question your information and assumptions about what human right violations happen there.
You seem to assume that Cuba performs as many evil stuff as one could imagine, and this opinion is based on sources that are 40 years old testimonies.
I do not have any information about internet censorship in Cuba, but for human right violations, we have Amnesty International reports. Compare reports for Cuba [amnesty.org] and the USA [amnesty.org]. W
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Providing internet connection without government's permission would be illegal and doing that one would certainly risk getting jailed.
I'd bet many would take the risk.
but any unlicenced satellite dishes are quickly dealth with.
Well then do it in a way that doesn't require big, easily-spotted satellite dishes. Super-powerful WiFi hardware on ships in international waters, maybe? Micro-drone swarms with WiFi mesh network capabilities and satellite internet linkage?
There is not much one can do until the Cuban government stops ETECSA monopoly and allows competition.
That's only true if one accepts defeat before one even begins to try to create solutions. Just look at Voice of America radio stations during the Cold War. This problem is not unsolvable, it just requires sufficient motivation and the will
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The cost of access has dropped to $1.50/hour, but that's a lot of money in a country where the average monthly income is $25.
Then maybe it's a good idea to do something about the latter instead of the former... I've paid more than that back in the dial-up days and that wasn't on an island that doesn't have any cheap ways to connect to the rest of the world.
Qué es, "puedo tener cheezburger?" (Score:1)