Cuba's Internet Dilemma: How to Emerge From the Web's Stone Age

The Internet is essential for today’s business, finance, communications and information, but today hasn’t dawned in Cuba, which still has some of the worst Internet access in the world.

It’s restricted to a few workplaces and fewer than 4 percent of homes, including those of senior officials, foreign executives and media, doctors and artists. It’s unavailable on the country’s 1991-vintage 2G mobile-phone network. President Raul Castro’s government recognizes the problem, but faces a dilemma: how to expand Internet access to boost its economy and satisfy its population while maintaining control of information. Cuban officials say at least 50 percent of the population will have residential Internet service and 60 percent will have mobile phones by 2020, without saying how they’ll achieve that. “It’s stupid how much they’ve delayed the inevitable,” said Carlos Alzugaray, a former Cuban ambassador to the European Union and professor at the University of Havana. “Meanwhile, we’re losing ground -- we’re in the Stone Age.” The Internet was used by 30 percent of Cuba’s population in 2014, according to the International Telecommunication Union, compared with 57 percent in its ally Venezuela and 87 percent in the US.