Cubans Buzzing Over First Legal Cell Phones

Will Weissert in Havana
Associated Press

April 15, 2008

Lines stretched for blocks outside phone centers yesterday as the government allowed Cuban citizens to sign up for cellular phone service for the first time.

Cuba's government had limited access to mobile phones and other products and services deemed to be luxuries in an attempt to preserve the relative economic equality that is a hallmark of life on the Communist-run island.

Only foreigners and Cubans holding key government posts had been allowed to have cell phones since the technology first appeared in Cuba in 1991. (See photos of life in Castro's Cuba circa 1998.)

While thousands of residents had obtained mobile phones through the black market, they could activate them only if foreigners agreed to lend their names to the contracts.

After the ban was lifted, lines formed before stores even opened and waits grew to more than an hour.

"Everyone wants to be first to sign up," said Usan Astorga, a 19-year-old medical student who stood for about 20 minutes before her line moved at all.

Teenagers and college students with expensive sunglasses and fashionable clothes dominated the lines, alongside the occasional elderly housewife or construction worker with dusty boots and a threadbare T-shirt.

"I am in need, I need to have one," said retiree Juana Verdez, who said a cell phone would help her stay in touch with family members.

Shorter lines also formed in Santiago, the island's second largest city, and in smaller towns.

Hello, Goodbye

Inside stores, Cubans showed ID cards to sign contracts and crowded around glass cases where cell phones rotated under bright lights.

Cuba's cell contracts cost about $120 (U.S.) to activate—half a year's wages on the average state salary. That cost does not include the phone or the credit needed to make and receive calls.

Cuba's state-controlled telecommunications monopoly, a joint venture with Telecom Italia, charges $2.70 a minute to call the U.S. and $5.85 a minute to reach Europe and most of the rest of the world.

Making or receiving local calls costs $0.30 a minute.

Astorga, the medical student, said she planned to buy about $65 in credit—enough, she hopes, for three months of very brief conversations.

"You can't talk all day because it's too expensive," she said. "It's only, Hello, I'm here. Goodbye. Or, Where are you? and hang up."

A basic Nokia phone offering little more than calling and text messaging costs about $75, while a snazzier camera phone is retailing for $280—more than twice what it costs in the U.S.

One woman waiting to legalize a cell phone previously registered under someone else's name said the recent changes have made Cubans happy.

"It's something. Something small but positive," said Norma, who asked that her full name not be printed because of the unauthorized telephone.

Easing Restrictions

Cuba's President Raul Castro has done away with several similar restrictions since formally taking power in February, and his popularity has surged as a result.

Raul's brother, former president Fidel Castro, has not been seen in public since undergoing emergency intestinal surgery in July 2006.

An article last Friday in the Communist Party newspaper Granma said it was Fidel Castro's idea all along to lift bans on mobile phones.

The paper also said Fidel was behind recent government orders easing restrictions that had prevented most Cubans from staying in hotels, renting cars, enjoying beaches reserved for tourists, and buying DVD players and other consumer goods.

"They are part of a process initiated and called for by Fidel," the paper said of the recent changes.

But in written essays Fidel recently criticized DVDs, cell phones, the Internet, email, and the social networking site Facebook, asking: "Does the kind of existence promised by imperialism make any sense?"

And he wrote on Saturday that the island may be going too far in easing some restrictions.

"As in Cuba, there are those with theories about easy access to consumer goods," he wrote, dismissing those people as "imperial ears and eyes hungry for these dreams."