According Martí News “The National Bureau of Cuban Statistics (NSO) said in its “Information Technology and Communications (ICT)” report,” that the country already has 1,014,000 computers and more than 2.9 million Internet users”…although the realities described by many Cubans on the island tells a vastly different story.
Alejandro Dominguez, a 24 year old computer operator and technician, said: “In the house no one has internet, the ones that do is from the “outside,” via contraband.”
The blogger Henry Constantin, a scholar of Somos Un Solo Pueblo, just returned to his native Camagüey and “saw something that could be encouraging, but wavers much one’s expectations.” According to Henry, “I see that in the access point in my city they installed four additional machines, and most of the time the machines are empty because people do not have sufficient money to enter. I do not know how true those statistics are.”
“A person who comes from abroad almost gives more thought, even than to food, to providing a computer or flash drive to a family” added Constantin, author of the blog “Reportes de viaje”.
“Except for a few small points in Havana, and another city with underground wi-fi networks, most Cubans are prohibited, for political and technological reasons, internet access. “I know houses where there are three computers, but no internet access,” the young blogger said.
In addition, well-known blogger Yoani Sánchez, “has pushed for full, uncensored internet access for the Cuban people.”
Even academics of the officialism “complain of barriers to access to information in Cuba,” this according to the documentary OFFLINE by the young documentarian Yaíma Pardo.
The Martí News article concludes by mentioning the Connect Cuba campaign as a project that has “pushed for the Havana regime to allows open access to the internet” and fulfill the promise of Cuban officials for the 3000x increase in internet speed and the additional access that should have come with the successful installation of a “submarine cable connection that links the port of La Guaira in Venezuela with the town of Verde Mar in Santiago de Cuba. ” Installation was completed in 2011, almost three years ago.
To read the full article (Spanish), click here.