Cuban cell phone service

Joby · 03-29-08, 03:25 PM

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HAVANA (AP) -- Cell phone service will soon be widely available to Cubans for the first time. Some questions and answers:

Q. What kind of service will be provided?

A. Details will be announced in the coming days, but it is likely to be the same service now available to foreigners and elite Cubans, which supports long distance national and international calls, and text messaging. It likely won't include e-mail and other smart-phone services. Camera phones available to everyday Cubans also won't be able to transmit images directly.

Q. So what's really new here?

A. Until now, only Cubans who work for foreign companies or have top government positions have been able to get legal contracts to use cell phones. A growing number of Cubans have managed to get around this by using other people's contracts or phones left behind by visiting friends or relatives from other countries, and the government hasn't stopped them. Now Cuba says it will legalize cell phone use and make it much more accessible.

Q. Why now?

A. Raul Castro said when he became president last month that he would quickly lift some prohibitions to create new government income. Some also believe that allowing Cubans to have modern gadgets such as cell phones, personal computers and microwave ovens may dissuade them from demanding deeper changes in the state-controlled economy.

Q. Who will provide the service?

A. Cuba's state-controlled telecommunications monopoly, a joint venture between the government and Telecom Italia.

AP Wire Stories

This, along with microwaves provided by a South Korean company, are the latest in Raul trying to bring the island up to date.

Hopefully, reform can be better perfomed here than it was in the USSR, perhaps along a more Chinese-type model.

Red_Dave · 04-03-08, 01:14 PM

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Originally Posted by Joby

AP Wire Stories

Snip

Hopefully, reform can be better perfomed here than it was in the USSR, perhaps along a more Chinese-type model.

By "a more Chinese-type model" do you mean one in which large companies have a greater amount of domience over society? I would see this as Cuba becoming less democratic rather then more given how the only way Cuba is more democratic then other countrys is its industrial democracy.

aegyptos · 04-03-08, 01:22 PM

Gosh, soon Cuba will enter the late Twentieth Century. Huzza for socialism!

Red_Dave · 04-03-08, 03:20 PM

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Originally Posted by aegyptos

Gosh, soon Cuba will enter the late Twentieth Century. Huzza for socialism!

Yes maybe one day their infant mortality rates will rival the united states.

RightOfCenter · 04-03-08, 06:14 PM

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Originally Posted by Red_Dave

Yes maybe one day their infant mortality rates will rival the united states.

This was addressed a long time ago by a poster (I forget the name and too lazy to look it up). They asserted that the United States counts premature births in its infant mortality statistics, whereas other countries (Cuba included) do not.

aegyptos · 04-03-08, 06:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Red_Dave

Yes maybe one day their infant mortality rates will rival the united states.

Pay attention to RightofCenter, Red Dave. He's telling it like it is. If the Commies counted theirs the way we count ours they would look like the third world crap hole they really are. US infant mortality is much lower than Cuba's and always has been.

RightOfCenter · 04-03-08, 06:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by aegyptos

Pay attention to RightofCenter, Red Dave. He's telling it like it is. If the Commies counted theirs the way we count ours they would look like the third world crap hole they really are. US infant mortality is much lower than Cuba's and always has been.

Aegyptos, you should probably take what I say with a grain of salt. I'm getting it third hand from another poster (though I believe that poster is a doctor).

aegyptos · 04-04-08, 06:01 AM

Don't have to take it third hand. I read a long article somewhere about how medical statistics were collected and counted in the US versus how those same kinds of information are collected and counted by the WHO and various EU authorities. For instance the US always seems to compare badly to the EU in medical reports. One major reason is because the US does not have socialized medicine. WHO for instance will award a nation points for having socialized medicine and discount heavily a nation that does not. That's politics. Clearly the EU/WHO preference for socialized meds is a political stance masquerading as medical.

Belief in the efficacy of Cuban medicine seems to be an article of faith on the left. In fact Cuban medicine is Soviet medicine circa 1975. People with a choice don't go to Havana to be treated. Castro himself went to Spain when he needed competant care.