Cubans queue for mobile phones as sales ban is lifted

Published on Tuesday 15 April 2008 22:14

LONG queues stretched outside shops in Cuba this week as the new government allowed citizens to sign up for mobile phone services for the first time.

The contracts cost about 60 to activate – half a year's wages on the average state salary. And that does not include a phone or the credit to make and receive calls.

But most Cubans have at least some access to US dollars or euros thanks to jobs in tourism, with foreign firms or money sent by relatives abroad. Queues formed before the stores opened, and waits grew to more than an hour.

"Everyone wants to be first to sign up," said Usan Astorga, a 19-year-old medical student who stood for about 20 minutes before her queue moved at all.

Getting through the day without a mobile phone is unthinkable now in most developed countries, but Cuba's government limited access to them and other so-called luxuries in an attempt to preserve the relative economic equality that is a hallmark of life on the communist-run island.

The president, Raul Castro, has done away with several other small but infuriating restrictions, and his popularity has surged as a result – defusing questions about his relative lack of charisma after his ailing older brother Fidel formally stepped down in February.

An article on Friday in the Communist Party newspaper Granma said it was Fidel Castro's idea all along to lift the ban on mobile phones, and that he was also behind recent government orders easing restrictions that had prevented most Cubans from staying in hotels, hiring cars, enjoying beaches reserved for tourists and buying DVD players and other consumer goods.

"They are part of a process initiated and called for by Fidel," Granma said of the recent changes.

Fidel Castro has not been seen in public since undergoing emergency intestinal surgery in July 2006, but he has continued to write essays every few days and recently criticised DVDs, mobile phones, the internet, e-mail and Facebook, asking: "Does the kind of existence promised by imperialism make any sense?"

Mobile phones on the island can make and receive calls from overseas, a key feature because the overwhelming majority of Cubans have relatives and friends in the United States.

Cuba's state-controlled telecommunications monopoly, a joint venture with Telecom Italia, charges 1.35 per minute to call the US. Making or receiving local calls costs 15p a minute.

Ms Astorga said she planned to buy about 30 in credit – enough, she hopes, for three months of very brief conversations. "You can't talk all day because it's too expensive," she said. "It's only, 'hello, I'm here. Goodbye.' Or 'where are you?' and hang up."