Annual report on Cuban ICT

The Cuban National Statistics Office reports over one million computers and twice as many .CU domain names as the previous year.

The Cuban National Statistics Office has released their 2014 Information and Communication Technology report. Here are the statistics on computers and networks:

They say there are over a million computers in Cuba and about half of them are networked. They report nearly 3 million Internet users, but say nothing of how many of those users have global access. The experience of a Cuban "user" is also much different than that of a "user" in a developed nation -- most access is via shared computers over dial up links. Access is infrequent and too slow to support modern Web sites.

For more discussion of the limitations of these statistics, see the Pervaiveness section of my 2011 report on the State of the Cuban Internet. The data has changed somewhat, but not the interpretation.

The number of .CU domain names doubled in 2013, reflecting a sharp increase in the number of businesses and other organizations using the Internet. This could have been triggered by liberalization of laws allowing private sector business.

The percent of the population with cell phone coverage was unchanged in 2013, indicating either a lack of capital for investment or a lag in the statistical reporting process.

These statistics are gathered by the Communication Ministry and, as with other nations, self-reported to the International Telecommunication Union.