Mobile email founders in Cuba

Mobile email founders in Cuba

Published: Friday, May 16, 2014, 5:30 p.m.

Updated 10 hours ago



HAVANA — On an island where most people have no Internet access, the

arrival of mobile phone email service was embraced with joy.



Tens of thousands of Cubans began emailing like crazy in March — for

days, until the service started to fail, taking much of Cuba's shaky

voice and text-messaging mobile service down with it



The island's aging cellphone towers became swamped by the flood of email

traffic, causing havoc for anyone trying to use the system.



Since then, the state telecom monopoly, Etecsa, has issued a rare

apology, and the troubles have eased. But problems with the service,

dubbed Nauta, offer a rare window into the Internet in Cuba, where the

digital age has been achingly slow to spread since arriving in 1996,

leaving the country isolated from the world of streaming video,

photo-sharing and 4G cellphones.



Cuba's government blames the technological problems on a U.S. embargo

that prevents most American businesses from selling products to the

Caribbean country. Critics of the government say it deliberately

strangles the Internet to halt the spread of dissent. Other observers

offer a less political explanation: a government desperate for foreign

exchange is investing little in infrastructure improvements while

extracting as much revenue as possible from communications services

largely paid for by Cubans' wealthier overseas relatives.



Source: Mobile email founders in Cuba | TribLIVE -

http://triblive.com/business/headlines/6127951-74/service-cuba-china#axzz31yWxkdFU