Phone
The lifting of U.S. restrictions on telecommunications, announced this week by the White House, could go some way toward breaking its isolation. Calls to and from Cuba could become cheaper and have better quality, and visiting Americans could be able to “roam” with their cell phones.
Several obstacles remain, though. Its not clear how eager the Cuban government would be to allow connections from the U.S. The communications network on the island is also underdeveloped, and few people can afford cell phones or computers.
Cubas telephone monopoly Etecsa already has roaming agreements with carriers in other countries, meaning that European tourists can use their phones there. An American arriving with a phone may be able to use it by buying a local SIM card, giving the phone a Cuban number, but it wouldnt be able to receive calls to that persons regular U.S. number.
A roaming agreement with Etecsa would take care of that.
If the Cuban government goes further and allows foreign investment, that could be a huge shot in the arm for the island.
“We would expect numerous carriers from around the world to be interested in being one of the first carriers in Cuba,” said Christopher King, an analyst with Stifel Nicolaus & Co.
While the island is poor, its one of the few areas left in the world where cell phones arent ubiquitous.
The Cuban government said in February that nearly half a million cell phones are active there. That is an increase of 60 percent from the previous year, when the government relaxed restrictions on phone ownership, but still small on an island with more than 11 million inhabitants.
Apart from U.S. carriers, Cuba could represent an opportunity for Mexico-based America Movil or Jamaica-based Digicel.
Right now, most communications with the island run over satellites, which are expensive and introduce delays in the audio transmission. Internet surfing is slow, too.
In the heavily Cuban immigrant Miami suburb of Hialeah, Rene Cisneros, 32, says the quality of calls to Cuba has improved but remains somewhat unpredictable.
“Sometimes its good. Sometimes you cant get through at all. Sometimes you hear an echo,” he said.
Osmel H. Aguero, 60, calls his mother in Camaguey, Cuba, with a cell phone he sent to her six months ago, which she activated there thanks to money he sent. Its a complicated system, but before it was even worse. He had to arrange calls at a time when she could go to the neighbors because she didnt have a home phone.
AT&T Inc. has a long history of connecting to Cuba, starting with telegraph cables in the 19th century. Even after Fidel Castros revolution, AT&T intermittently operated a copper cable running underwater from Cojimar on Cuba to West Palm Beach, Fla. But its capacity was at most 144 calls, according to a NASA telecommunications history.
AT&T spokesman Michael Coe said the cable is no longer in operation, and the company connects calls to the island through third-party carriers. As for roaming agreements and direct connections to Cuba, the company has no plans yet.
“Were certainly going to study the administrations proposal,” Coe said.
Barbados-based Columbus Network operates several fiber-optic cables spanning the Caribbean, including one that runs just off the coast of Cuba not far from Havana on its way from Florida to Mexico. That cable has an installed “branching point” that would make it easy to extend a connection to the island.