The Internet is open

Progreso Semanal

HAVANA – Cuba is beginning to open the Internet to its people, according to a resolution of the Ministry of Communications (No. 197/2013), published May 27 in the Official Gazette.

The resolution will take effect on June 4, and the state-owned Empresa de Telecomunicaciones de Cuba, S.A. (also known as ETECSA) has set up 118 link-up centers. Users can buy Nauta cards at ETECSA offices in practically all provinces and in the special municipality of Isle of Youth, the former Isle of Pines.

The prices will depend on the type of service desired by the user. Someone who wishes to utilize an e-mail address (something that can be done only through the Nauta portal) will pay 1.50 CUC per hour. Someone who wishes to tour the Web will pay 4.50 CUC per hour. That price is cheaper than what hotels charge, which is no less than 6 CUC per hour.

[Translator’s Note: One CUC, or Cuban convertible peso, is officially the equivalent of one U.S. dollar.]

The hotels will continue to provide Internet access at their own rates and their connections will be conventional, not through the Nauta portal.

The users may set up 30-day access accounts, or they may set up a permanent account in the Nauta portal.

Until the resolution takes effect, Cuban citizens may not access the Internet at ETECSA’s current link-up centers, which are reserved for foreigners or accredited journalists only.

The news that the Internet would be gradually opened to the population had been expected for a while. It was reinforced by the statements of Miguel Díaz Canel, First Vice President of the Councils of State and Ministers, regarding the practical impossibility of erecting barriers to the flow of communications.

The measure, which at present excludes contracts outside the Nauta portal – thus excluding connections to the user’s home – leaves open the door for home connections but does not say when that might happen. To this correspondent, the decision made and the framework in which it was made are in line with the policy of gradualism applied to all the changes made by the Cuban government.

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