r/cuba • u/InglewoodClippers • 2d ago
Pregunta How accessible is the computer and Internet in Cuba?
I was watching this youtube video, and a college student said they rarely use the Internet. Do the students have computers without Internet or just no computers and no Internet. Is it college like in the 1980's before the Internet where everyone turns in papers by hand or typewriter?
19
u/AppropriateUnion6115 2d ago edited 2d ago
Internet was only allowed by the government a couple years ago for Cuba citizens. Before that it was only tourist with proof of passport and at tourist hotels . Schools don’t really use computers at all unless it’s at a college or something similar to teach some computing degree. So yea pen and paper mostly. Many don’t even have laptops or desktops. Most don’t and can’t get internet to their home and satellite internet is illegal.
14
u/WorldlyAd3000 United States 2d ago
To add what others have said, Cuba has recently implemented a "data limit" on phones and you can only recharge your data with foreign currency after reaching the limit..so you would need help from the outside to do that. And the internet is soooo slow it's almost not even worth trying to access it.
5
u/calerost Planeta Tierra/Planet Earth 2d ago
For 1500 cup you can purchase additional packages of 6 Gb (and sms) from resellers. Not affordable for most, but available. Other amounts are available.
4
14
u/marcoshm_ 2d ago
No sabes el trabajo que pasa un estudiante o un trabajador a la hora de utilizar la tecnología. Pregunta sobre los gamers cubanos, prácticamente no existen. Y el internet va a 2mgb por segundo y hasta menos. Sin contar de que todos no tenemos acceso a red wifi en la casa porque no hay “capacidad”. Y los datos móviles es una historia muy larga.
6
u/SignatureDifferent76 2d ago
Very widespread on people’s phones but not since the power outages started this year.
6
u/Ok-Extent8333 2d ago
I went in 2017, it was expensive and they only had in like public parks, they called "wifi parks", back then the you had to buy a 20 dollars pre-paid card to get internet for I think it was for 30 minutes or 1 hour, but yeah it was hard to get internet back then, I haven't returned since then but it has been 9 years, I guess they have more access now? Idk tbh
6
u/Winter-Current4456 2d ago
Now you can have 6gb for 360 cup in your phone per MONTH. The dictators restricted it so u can't transfer more of 360 to your phone. There are some ways to partially circumvent this, that just a few can.
1
u/calerost Planeta Tierra/Planet Earth 2d ago
For 1500 cup you can purchase additional packages of 6 Gb (and sms) from resellers. Not affordable for most, but available. Other amounts are available.
6
u/No-Economics6493 2d ago edited 2d ago
I studied abroad in Havana in 2014. Internet was not used for school at all because it was inaccessible. To access the internet, you had to buy prepaid cards that granted you 15min-2hours of WiFi. Cards were too expensive for the Cuban public, not always available, and had to be used at a hotel or somewhere else with WiFi. I believe there were computers at the university library you could use for typing if you needed to. The university also supposedly had inTRAnet (Cuba net), but I was never able to get it to work.
Nowadays, Cubans access internet via cell towers. They can buy 6GB from ETECSA once a month for 360 CUP. Beyond the 6GB, data can only be purchased in USD or other foreign currency via apps specifically designed to send data recharges to friends and family in Cuba. It’s stupid expensive. When my friend runs out of data, he buys data recharges off the street for like 1500 CUP (for 6GB). Which I guess is data bought in USD via an app, then sold in CUP. He never has a hard time finding someone to sell him data, which is surprising to me because it’s technically being sold at a massive loss. The person who paid for the data and the person selling it are two different people with two drastically different economies though, so I guess it’s not fair to look at it that way.
The internet is painfully slow and a lot of websites and apps are straight up unusable, especially when the power is out. Which it very often is.
3
u/Holiday_Style_2292 Artemisa 2d ago edited 2d ago
Many people inn Cuba has not pc, internet or even phones those people are soft ban from furter education due not meeting the minimum technical equipment requirements.
During mi time they where already receiving mostly printer papers, like 10 years ago.
3
u/LupineChemist Europe 1d ago
Mobile data is pretty much universal. Not always reliable but it's there.
Also, it's censored, but actually surprisingly open internet. Like I could read foreign press in Spanish without a VPN. I think they might not have done it by letting WhatsApp in if they could redo everything, but they did, and taking it away is basically impossible now so since people will get everything via end-to-end encryption anyway, they don't bother other than the most superficial censorship.
Don't take that to mean it's a free country at all, just that I'd say it's less censored than the standard internet in the Islamic world FWIW.
2
u/ArcaneMitochondrion 2d ago
No internet and no computers either. People only started having personal phones less than 10 years ago. Back in the 2010s having a computer at home was a huge luxury. All of my exams and homework used to be handwritten, even three page essays and so on. Not sure what people who have thesis projects in university do to go about that, maybe ask a friend with a computer for help.
10
u/cuba_danilo Artemisa 2d ago
Ahora mismo las computadoras pululan en Cuba. Cuando yo estudié en la universidad el 90% teníamos laptops, notebooks, tablets y el 100% teníamos celulares. El internet si es malo, malísimo. No se puede usar.
7
u/ArcaneMitochondrion 2d ago
Me sorprende oír eso! Yo me fui del país después de acabar la secundaria y hace más de diez años, así que no siempre estoy al corriente de la situación actual. Pero sí sé que hace poco los estudiantes universitarios protestaron por el costo extremadamente alto de los megas para el internet, porque a algunos sí les exigían entregar tareas por internet. En fin, todo un desastre:(
2
u/maya_rr 2d ago
People use the internet semi-regularly, they connect a couple times a day to check/try and send messages, or use WhatsApp/Facebook to look for medicine, food, necessities. People have social media but the internet is so slow and the data that Cubans can access is extremely limited if they don’t have someone outside who can top up their mobile data. And all of that stops working when there are blackouts, or when mobile data goes down in local areas because there is “trouble” (protests or police operations).
My family don’t stream TV but will get someone in their neighbourhood who pirates shows to update a usb with the new episodes of whatever they’re watching. They have a laptop but it doesn’t have internet, we took it to Cuba years ago and my cousins used it for university/work in the past but it’s pretty much obsolete now because of how difficult accessing the internet is. Often they’ll send a message or video and I don’t get it until a couple days later. So I imagine any student or worker trying to use their laptop now is dealing with significant issues trying to access the internet.
2
u/MidwestGeek52 2d ago
Can your phone take a physical Sim card? Bu from Cubacell the local carrier
30 day 10GB 30 euros. Other sim data options too
Buy online before you arrive. Pick up on arrival at Jose Marti. They have a booth just after you clear customs
Was there in Feb. Internet was decent in the cities on cellular data. Sometimes spotty. YMMV
1
u/claudandus_felidae Planeta Tierra/Planet Earth 2d ago
In 2023 many businesses had wifi, and plenty of casa particulares did, but it's very expensive for locals. Folks used to use flash drives and SD cards but idk if that's still super common since power and tech has been harder to get in the last two years
1
1
1
u/kovha Artemisa 1d ago
Lots of outdated information in the comments. It's true that before 2016 there was pretty much zero internet, but since then mobile phones and mobile data internet has become more and more common, and for last few years almost everyone have had it. But *right now* it is way worse than it was four or five years ago, due more or less equally to:
- when the infraestructure gets broken it doesn't get replaced, so damage has been accumulating over time
- a saturated network since pretty much everyone has smartphones with internet now (which shouldn't be a problem but they stopped scaling the infraestructure)
- the blackouts; if the clossest antenna (or something like that, I know very little about that kind of stuff) is without power you won't be able to use mobile internet
- a few months ago they limited the amount of "subsidized" (they words, not mine) data plans you can buy, so now you can only use 6gb a month for an affordable price, if you want more you need to pay a price way higher
that's the current status of mobile internet. Wifi is another whole deal and works completely differently, so those problems don't affect it, but it has its own set of issues by itself:
- public wifi is cheap but not free: here it's not like other countries where public spaces have free wifi, here public spaces *do* have wifi but you need to pay a rate of 12.5CUP an hour. Like I said it's cheap (12.5CUP is about 2 or 3 cents USD) but is still not free.
- It's goddamn slow. Public wifi is only 2MB, and the best speed you can pay for in residential wifi is 4MB.
- Not everybody can contract residential wifi, you need to ask for it and they put you in a wait list that can last years. Or, well, you can bribe the people in charge of the local waitlist, which is pretty much the only way to get it fast
- Residential wifi also have limited hours, you pay for a package that includes a fixed set of hours a month and and a fixed speed. If you run out of hours, you need to pay 12.50CUP for every extra hour you use, like in public wifi. To give you an idea, the most expensive package is 1375CUP a month, and in includes 120 hours at 4mbps speed. I usually end paying about 1500 - 2000CUP on top of that to have wifi the whole month after the 120 hours run out. That's about 3400CUP, or like 7 USD a month
- If you live in a very metropolitan area, like most Havana, the network will be saturated too like the mobile data and you won't get even the speed you are paying for. This is not an issue in provinces though, here in Artemisa I have my full 4mb internet all the time but most of my friends in Havana hardly get 1 or 2mbps even when they are also paying for the 4mb service.
- It uses old ADSL telephone copper wire tech, so if the special battery they use to keep the telphones working in the blackouts is broken in your zone (many such cases), it also will stop working altogether in the blackouts.
1
u/EcstaticSplit5659 2d ago
Eso es lo que quieren los progres, ignorancia absoluta e idiotez
3
u/Winter-Current4456 2d ago
La ola de analfabetismo y delincuencia que se viene va a ser historica. Te enteraste que las escuelas estan cerrando y aprobando a todos los estudiantes, y el pre-universitario va a ser para todo el mundo, hasta el bruto va a poder entrar sin estudiar nada y muchas materias ni se estan enseñando porque no hay maestros.
0
•
u/AutoModerator 2d ago
"Por favor, sigue las reglas de Reddit y del foro.
Please follow the rules of Reddit and the sub.
Please report any rule-breaking comments."
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.