Cuba’s cellular telephone
service mushroomed in 2008, but the remainder of its telecommunications
and information technology sectors were stagnant or even shrank,
according to the most recent report from the Havana government.
The data released by the Office of National Statistics (ONE)
(1) in fact put Cuba at or near the hemisphere’s bottom
in terms of fixed telephone lines, personal computers and
access to the Internet. ONE’s data, especially on the
economy, is sometimes regarded as suspect. But its June report
is so grim that it’s difficult to believe the figures
could be worse.
The sole positive news was
a significant jump in the number of cellular lines from 2007
to 2008, apparently the result of Raul Castro’s decision
to allow all Cubans to contract for cell service -- though
at sky-high prices, about $35 a month for the service in a
country where the average monthly income officially stands
at about $17. Cell service during that period grew by about
136,000 lines, from about 330,000 to about 466,000, according
to ONE.
Yet fixed telephone lines barely
grew in the same period, from 999,490 to 1,033,565. With a
total of 1.42 million fixed, cell and other telephone lines
in a country of 11.2 million people, the island’s telephone
density per 100 inhabitants at the end of 2008 stood at 12.6,
the lowest in Latin America and even lower than Haiti’s,
the poorest country in the hemisphere.
In its information technology sections, ONE reported that
1,314,000 Cubans had graduated as of the end of 2007 from
computer literacy courses at the 611 Youth Computer Clubs
(Joven Club de Computacion), government-run centers spread
around the island that claimed to have 6,300 computers. Yet
the rest of ONE’s numbers left many puzzling how those
Cubans would use that knowledge, given the limited number
of computers and internet connections.
Cuba has some 630,000 personal
computers -- 56 per 1000 people, compared to the 191.5 per
1000 reported by the Caribbean islands of St. Kitts and Nevis
-- of which 400,000 are “connected in network,”
according to the statistics office. Its 1,450,000 reported
“users” equal about 13 percent of the population,
although Havana residents say most of those computers are
at work places, such as ministries, factories and hospitals,
and that most of those “users” are likely only
on the island’s “intranet” -- a system that
limits their access to mostly government web pages and domestic
e-mails.
Even at 13 percent, Cuba lags far behind other Latin American
countries in Internet access. It’s ahead of El Salvador,
with 9.9 percent, but behind Costa Rica’s 35.7 per cent
and Jamaica’s 53 percent, according to Internet World
Stats, an independent web site that tracks the industry. The
average for all of Latin America and the Caribbean is 29.9
percent.
ONE also reported computer equipment imports worth $6.1 million
in 2008, compared to $3.6 million in 2007 and a mere $120,640
in 2006, as well as 2,168 domain names registered under the
“.CU” extension. Under a sector titled “Investments
in information technologies and communications” it reported
317 million Cuban pesos invested in 2008, far less than the
423 million it reported for 2007 and about the same as the
312 million it reported for 2003.
Despite Cuba’s clear lag behind the rest of the region
on the communications and information technology sectors,
Raul Castro has given no hint that he might take advantage
of President Barack Obama’s decision in April to ease
some of the telecommunications sections of the U.S. embargo.
U.S. companies can now provide cellular service and roaming
in Cuba, satellite TV and fiber optic cable facilities, and
accept payments for those services from U.S. residents --
for example, someone in Miami paying for a relative in Havana
to receive satellite TV.
Castro’s stance is not
going to help Cuba improve its service -- or its world rankings
-- in those sectors. While the 12.6 phone lines per 100 inhabitants
reported for 2008 was about double the 6.4 lines per 100 reported
for 2003, it’s still way below the 15 per 100 that Cuba
reported in 1958 -- at the time the second highest rate in
Latin America.
