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FROM
CUBA
E-mail, dollars, and the Internet in
Cuba
HAVANA, February (www.cubanet.org) The
recent news that the government was getting
ready to move against unauthorized Internet
connections shook many here who had somehow
contrived to get online.
In the last few years, the government took
hurried, definite steps to move the country
toward the information age. It acquired
thousands of computers to be used in schools.
It put in place a digital cable from one
end of the island to the other. It opened
up a computation university at the former
Soviet electronic listening base at Lourdes.
The Cuban Post Office, which is nominally
in charge of telephone communications, offers
e-mail service in cybercafés that
have been set up in every municipality's
post office and even some free-standing
ones. But at present very few of these are
operational. The computers installed in
these cybercafés belong to the TuIsla
(Your Island) system, an intranet that allows
limited e-mail service.
Etecsa, the joint venture telephone company,
offers access to Internet and e-mail, but
only to foreigners. The company's service,
called Enet, operates small stores where
they sell telephones, offer international
long distance, videoconferencing, and sell
Internet access cards for 15 dollars, again
only to foreigners.
The exposure, even if indirect, only whet
Cubans' appetite to surf the Web and there
arose a black market for computers and an
underground net of sorts. About a year ago,
a Cuban could secure a connection by paying,
in dollars, for an "international connection"
for his phone, getting a foreigner to front
for him to buy a 15-dollar Internet card,
and installing a computer at home.
The best estimates are that by the end
of 2003, beginning of 2004, there were more
than 40,000 such clandestine connections
to the Internet. Some used the 15-dollar
cards, others bought passwords from people
who have them because they work at a foreign
company.
The new regulations call for detecting
these clandestine connections, confiscating
the equipment, levying a fine, and disconnecting
the user's telephone service.
More likely than not, everyone who had
one of those clandestine connections to
the Web has already taken it down.
A call to Etecsa this morning yielded the
information that the 15-dollar Internet
connection cards are no longer being sold.
The only remaining possibility right now
for Cubans to log on is to discretely buy
an access card in a quiet hotel that has
a cybercafé, usually consisting of
a computer on a table next to the bar, at
a cost of 6 dollars for one hour's use.
This entails, of course, walking into a
hotel intended for foreigners only, so anyone
who doesn't look the part, may find the
entrance barred.
Officially, Internet usage in Cuba is controlled
by a statute enacted at the end of the 90s.
Two-and-a-half years ago, in a flurry of
activity, the government started offering
e-mail service, chatting for the masses,
but lately there has been a hasty retreat
from that policy.
The irony behind it all is that after being
the beneficiaries of a campaign for computer
literacy, Cubans will only be allowed to
open authorized windows.
Versión
original en español
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