Raul Castro: Cubans can have cell phones

[robcon]

Source: AP

By WILL WEISSERT, Associated Press Writer

HAVANA - President Raul Castro's government said Friday it is allowing cell phones for ordinary Cubans, a luxury previously reserved for those who worked for foreign firms or held key posts with the communist-run state.

It was the first official announcement of the lifting of a major restriction under the 76-year-old Castro, and marked the kind of small freedom many on the island have been hoping he would embrace since succeeding his older brother Fidel as president last month.

Some Cubans previously ineligible for cell phones had already gotten them by having foreigners sign contracts in their names, but mobile phones are not nearly as common in Cuba as elsewhere in Latin America or the world. Telecommunications monopoly Empresa de Telecomunicaciones de Cuba S.A., or ETECSA said it would allow the general public to sign prepaid contracts in Cuban Convertible Pesos, which are geared toward tourists and foreigners and worth 24 times the regular pesos Cuban state employees are paid in.

The government controls well over 90 percent of the economy and while the communist system ensures most Cubans have free housing, education and health care and receive ration cards that cover basic food needs, the average monthly state salary is just 408 Cuban pesos, a little less than $20.

A program in Convertible Pesos likely will ensure that cell phone service will be too expensive for many Cubans, but ETECSA's statement said doing so will allow it to improve telecommunication systems using cable technology and eventually expand the services it offers in regular pesos.


Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080328/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/cuba_cell_phones

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This is not the first sign that Raul Castro will tend to relax the doctrinaire totalitarian state that his brother, Fidel Castro, created. These are hopeful signs, IMO, that Cuba will crawl out of its police state - perhaps gradually, instead of with a revolution.