Cuba’s Web Entrepreneurs Search for U.S. Clients, and Reliable Wi-Fi

At his parents’ cramped house in Havana, Yondainer Gutiérrez builds apps and websites on a makeshift computer that runs on pirated software. He has no Internet access there, so he rents time on a friend’s connection to send his work to clients in France, Britain, Canada and the rest of Latin America. This is outsourcing, Cuban-style, a little-advertised circle of software developers, web designers, accountants and translators who -- despite poor and expensive Internet access -- sell their skills long-distance. And ever since the United States in February authorized Americans to import goods and services from Cuban entrepreneurs for the first time in half a century, they have their eyes on America as well.

Many who work at the University of Information Sciences, or UCI, near Havana, or the José Antonio Echeverría Higher Polytechnic Institute, or Cujae (pronounced Coo-hai), moonlight as freelance programmers, using the institutes’ broadband to transfer large files, software developers said. Others buy dial-up connections on the black market -- for about $200 per month -- or rent time on wireless connections at big hotels. The smoky lobby of the Habana Libre hotel in downtown Havana serves as an office for Cubans who write software, build apps, unblock or fix mobile telephones, or rent houses. They huddle daily on deep armchairs and pay $8 per hour for Wi-Fi. Dairon Medina, 28, a Cuban computer programmer who worked as a freelancer for several years before moving to Ecuador four years ago, hires colleagues in Cuba to do jobs for clients in Argentina, Canada, Germany and the United States.If American clients began hiring Cubans on a regular basis, he said, “it could be an immense market” for Cuba.