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Cuba's state-run wireless monopoly, Cubacel, has some of the steepest rates in the world, charging the equivalent of 50 cents per minute for outgoing and incoming calls.

In a country where the average salary is less than $20 a month, half a day's wages can disappear with the first "Hola."

And yet, with Internet access on the island so limited, Cubans are increasingly connecting to the world through their cell phones, instead of the Web. When friends or family members dial from abroad, the calls are free to receive. Ditto for international text messages.

Only the Cuban government is not clamping down its network, but opening it up.

Since President Raul Castro lifted a ban on Cubans owning cell phones in 2008, the number of wireless accounts in the country has soared by 600,000 -- to more than 838,000 today, according to Cuban telecom officials.

Activation fees have been slashed from $150 two years ago to roughly $25.

International calling rates also are being cut, and the number of wireless users in the country (population 11 million) is expected to grow to 2.4 million by 2015.

The island's GSM network already covers 70 percent of Cuba's territory, and further expansions are planned.

"We're going to keep working to provide the benefits of telecommunications to a greater number of Cubans," said Cuban telecom official Maximo Lafuente at a recent Havana news conference.

"There's no doubt that cell phones are an important foundation to the country's development."

The U.S. government wouldn't disagree, even if it has a differing type of "development" in mind.

It views cell phones as direct channels of information to an island where the media is almost entirely state-controlled and less than 2 percent of Cuban households have an Internet connection. Popular voice-over-Internet-protocol services like Skype are also blocked.

Last year, the Obama administration exempted U.S. wireless providers from long-standing trade sanctions against Cuba.

"This will increase the means through which Cubans on the island can communicate with each other and with persons outside of Cuba," the administration said.

U.S. companies and the Cuban government haven't signed any deals, though, and the chances of such agreements seem remote.

The biggest obstacle is some $160 million in Cuban telecom assets that U.S. courts have seized to award Cuban American litigants.

United Nations statistics show that Cuba has only 9.8 fixed phone lines per 100 inhabitants, among the lowest in the Western Hemisphere.

So expanding wireless access enables Cubans who don't have landlines to possess at least some form of communication device, even if few can afford to talk on the phones.

Instead, Cubans primarily use the phones as text-messaging machines and glorified pagers.

Users screen incoming numbers, then call back later from a public phone or the house of a friend or neighbor. Text messages are roughly 15 cents apiece -- still a bit pricey -- but also increasingly popular.

Even capitalist-style SPAM is beginning to contaminate the island's networks. Some Cubacel subscribers have been receiving text messages from entertainment promoters about upcoming parties or concerts.

By Nick Miroff, GlobalPost
Ramon Espinosa/Associated Press

Source: www.post-gazette.com


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