Update on Cuban advances in the "computerization of society"

A recent televised roundtable enumerated advances in the computerization of Cuban society, including:

• Telephone density is 58% with 6.5 million accounts, 5.2 million of which are cell phones.
• 1.5 million people access Nauta mail with cell phones.
• Over 1.7 million have permanent accounts.
• There are 1,713 public-access spots: 709 WiFi locations, over 700 at ETECSA premises and the same number in third-party locations (but 709+1400 is 2109, not 1,713).
• There are over 37,000 Nauta Hogar accounts, 22,000 of which were installed this year, and they hope to install another 30,000 by the end of the year.
• Nauta Hogar is available in 136 municipalities and 22 percent of the Popular Councils.
• They have installed a lot of fiber.
• There are over 1,400 cellular base stations and over 520 of them are 3G compatible.
• There are 935 ATMs, serving all provinces, but only 69 municipalities.
• There are currently 11,500 point-of-sale terminals, mainly in retail stores.
• UCI is working on "RED Cuba" a search service for all national intranet content.
• UCI has a service for monitoring over 1,500 national intranet Web sites -- presumably monitoring traffic, not content.
• Apklis, the online application center for Android devices, will serve as an alternative to the Google Play store for Cuban applications.
• An e-government application for the collection and management of fines has been installed in 198 offices.

A few tentative observations come to mind. They are continuing to stress the national Cuban intranet with applications like Apkis and RED Cuba. Nauta Hogar is attractive to a subset of people and small businesses who can afford it and are located in served areas, but it will not reach the mass population -- for that, they are counting on 3G cellular and public-access spots.

Here is the roundtable video:

Statistics and predictions from Informatica 2018

The 2018 Informatica conference and trade show concludes today in Havana and Mayra Arevich, executive president of ETECSA, gave some Internet-related figures and predictions during a panel session.

• ETECSA's objective is "to reach more Cubans."
• There are 673 WIFI hotspots, 207 fixed navigation rooms and 771 navigation areas in hotels, Joven Clubs and post offices.
• As an indication of capacity, she said they had achieved up to 124,400 simultaneous connections.
• They plan to add 150 new wired and wireless areas in 2018, bringing coverage to 44% of the Popular Councils.
• They installed DSL in 14,634 homes last year and expect to add 52,500 this year. They've installed 12,682 so far this year.
• Ninety-five percent of the home DSL accounts are at the slowest speed of 1 mb/s. I wonder how much of that is due to poor wiring that will not allow higher speeds in an area and how much is due to cost. The 1 mb/s service costs 15 CUC for 30 hours online.
• Three G wireless is available throughout Havana and she estimated 47% of the population was covered.
• In 2017, more than 3,992 new data links to institutions of 23 national organizations and entities were installed and they plan to install 5,000 new data services to them this year. I assume she was referring to 5,000 new links and wonder what their speed will be.

(Click here for previous updates by Ms. Arevich).

Maimir Mesa Ramos, Minister of Communications, also gave a few statistics during his opening speech.

• There are now 614 Joven Clubs throughout the island.
• The Universidad de Ciencias Informáticas has graduated over 14,400 engineers since it was founded.
• There are 4.6 million Cuban cell-phone subscribers and that number is expected to exceed 5 million this year. (I wonder how many of those use 3G data and how many 3G-compatible handsets Cubans own).
• He referred to the development of "modest" content and services like Infomed, Ecured and Cubarte -- Cuba could do much more as a producer and distributor of educational and entertainment content for the Spanish-speaking world

(Click here for previous updates by Mr. Mesa).

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.

Cuba publishes 2012 ICT indicators

The National Office of Statistics and Information has published their annual report on information and communication technology.  (We have summarized the 2010 and 2011 reports in earlier posts).

The current report presents telephone, postal, telegraph and computer data from 2008-12. Here are the computer and networking statistics:

Bear in mind that these statistics, like those of other nations, are self-reported to the International Telecommunication Union.

I assume that the numbers of networked computers and number of Internet users refer to the Cuban intranet and the Internet combined.  (While most of the other indicators are defined in the report, these are not).

The number of .cu domain registrations grew by only 2.6%, which is a bit surprising given the recent emphasis on private business.

Mobile coverage is the "star" statistic, but, as far as I know, it is all 2G at this time and the growth in infrastructure (coverage) was considerably slower than subscriber growth. The same domestic infrastructure problems that have plagued the Internet and access to the undersea cable restricts back-haul from cell towers.

Updated Cuban ICT statistics

Cuba’s National Office of Statistics and Information (ONE) released their annual report on Information and Communication Technology in June, 2012. The Internet-related statistics shown here indicate relatively little change. let’s consider each of them.

	2010	2011	Increase
Number of computers (thousands)	724	783	8%
Number of networked computers (thousands)	434	470	8%
Number of Internet users (thousands)	1,790	2,610	46%
PCs/1,000 capita	64	70	9%
Internet users/1,000 capita	159	232	46%
Number of .cu domains	2,225	2,285	3%
Mobile telephone subscribers (thousands)	1,003	1,315	31%
% of population with mobile access	78	78

The report showed a 46% gain in Internet users in 2011, but only an 8% gain in the number of networked computers, indicating increased sharing of computers in public access points or homes and offices. We should also bear in mind that Cuban Internet access is not comparable to that in the developed world. Users are online relatively few hours per month and nearly all access is over dial-up connections, making access to modern Web sites and other applications unfeasible. Most accounts are restricted to domestic traffic.

The new figures reveal a lack of investment. There was only a 3% gain in the number of domains registered in the .cu top level domain, indicating that few new enterprises or other organizations created Web sites or other network applications. The fact that no increase was reported in the percent of the population with access to mobile phones indicates little investment in infrastructure.

The most positive figure may be a 31% increase in mobile phone subscribers, but we should bear in mind that Cuba has second generation phones, used for conversation and text messages, not the smart phones that are increasingly used as pocket computers and Internet access devices in developing nations.

I understand that these figures are government supplied and definitions of indicators vary among agencies like ONE and the ITU, but presumably ONE's 2010 and 2011 methodology is the same. I'd welcome discussion of and alternative interpretations of these and other statistics.

New Cuban ICT statistics

New government statitics on information and communication technology are out.  I'm travelling now, but will check them out when I get back.

Conference papers online

Papers and proceedings from the 21st annual meeting of the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy (ASCE) are now available online. The papers cover a wide range of social, political and economic topics.

Two of special interest to this group are Ted Henken's A Bloggers' Polemic: Debating Independent Cuban Blogger Projects in a Polarized Political Context and my paper The Past, Present and Future of the Internet in Cuba.

This is an interesting, rigorous conference. The theme of next year's conference is "Where is Cuba Going?" and the call for papers is available on the ASCE Web site.

ICT statistics for 2010 -- more Internet users but fewer Internet computers and domain names

The Cuban National Statistics Office has issued their 2011 Annual Statistical Report, which includes data on information and communication technology.

The table shown here (click it to enlarge) presents physical ICT indicators. As you see, there are now over a million mobile phone subscribers. Note that Cuban subscribers do not have "smart" phones used for mobile Internet access -- their phones are limited to calls, text messages, taking pictures, etc.

The number of (often restricted) Internet users increased a little between 2009 and 2010. We always expect Internet growth, but it is surprising that the number of computers on the Net and the number of .cu domain names actually decreased slightly.

Click here to download a spreadsheet with the table.

Reuters summarized the statistics along with a cool photo here.