The long awaited expansion of Internet access in Cuba could be finally happening in July, when 35 new Wi-Fi areas will be made available to users all over the country.
The announcement was made by Luis Manuel Diaz, Commercial Director of Cuba’s sole telecommunications provider, ETECSA, in statements to Juventud Rebelde newspaper on Thursday.
The opening of these points will contribute to reduce the long lines outside the few Internet centers where customers have to use ETECSA’s PCs to surf the web, and save any information they may need to flash drives.
Over the last few weeks, bloggers and journalists had been posting about the installation of Wi-Fi antennas in several points in the country, which, the ETECSA official confirmed in his statements, are antennas imported from China for the expansion of the national network.
These first hotspots have been located in areas where the flow of people is high, mainly in parks and promenades. In Havana, for instance, there will be one in Vedado, in the stretch of 23rd Street that starts on the corner of L Street, and ends in the Malecon seafront –locally known as La Rampa.
Outside Havana the first to benefit will be the main municipalities of each province.
The connection speed will be of one megabit per user, with capacities for up to 50 users at the same time in small areas, and 100 in the larger areas.
The implementation of this new service comes along with another piece of good news: the reduction of rates from 4.50 CUC (some 5 dollars) per one hour online to 2.00 CUC as of July 1st.
Diaz said that this opening will increase the actual access of the people to the Internet, but noted that the price is still not low enough. The two dollar per hour rate represents the tenth part of the average national wage.
The only place in Cuba where access to the Internet is free is the studio of visual artist Kcho, that started offering the service a few months ago.
Cubans are eager to get more access to the world wide web, and some have been using the Wi-Fi areas of hotels and foreign companies, either at those facilities or in their proximities when access is denied to people who, for instance, are not customers of the hotel providing the service.
Recently, a Wi-Fi area was installed at the Central Park of Trinidad, a city in central Cuba, as part of a preliminary trial with a view to the implementation of the “National Strategy for the Development of Broadband in Cuba,” outlined in a document leaked a few days ago.
According to the document, the setting up of Wi-Fi areas is central in these efforts to increase Internet penetration in the country, where only 25{bb302c39ef77509544c7d3ea992cb94710211e0fa5985a4a3940706d9b0380de} of the population has access, according to official figures.
The wireless solution is less expensive and more beneficial for countries with little resources, like Cuba. Many experts, including Google Ideas executive Brett Perlmutter, have recommended it as a good option to accomplish results in a short period of time.
