Heavy use of Cuba mobile e-mail service strains cellular network

Heavy use of Cuba mobile e-mail service strains cellular network

Published June 25, 2014 EFE



More than 238,000 customers have signed on in just three months for a

new mobile e-mail service in Cuba despite its high cost, taking state

telecoms company Etecsa by surprise and causing network disruptions.



The number of people signing up for cellphone contracts on the island

soared between March and May, with a total of 173,098 new handsets on

the network, according to Etecsa, which said 238,687 wireless phone

users acquired a local e-mail address via the island's nauta.cu system.



"Growth was not expected to be so rapid," Etecsa's director of

institutional communication, Luis Manuel Diaz, said in an interview with

Communist Party daily Granma.



He acknowledged that "intensive use" of the new mobile e-mail service

has caused disruptions to wireless telephony, including an inability to

connect with other cellphones, dropped calls and text messages failing

to arrive at their destination or arriving only after a lengthy delay.



The new e-mail modality has resulted in 29 million e-mails being sent in

just three months, or an average of 400,000 e-mails delivered daily and

2 terabytes of data in total, the Etecsa director said.



The company said it hopes to solve the problems by installing 80 base

stations nationwide, 34 of which are already in place.



In early March, Etecsa announced the launch of this new service at a

price of 1 convertible peso ($1) per megabyte received or sent via

e-mail, a high rate for most of inhabitants of the island, where the

average salary is just $20 a month.



But demand has surpassed expectations despite the cost and the fact that

users can only send e-mails to - and receive them from - others with a

nauta.cu account.



Mobile access to e-mail is a popular novelty in a country where the vast

majority of people lack a home Internet connection.



The Cuban government prioritizes Internet use in public places and

expanded that access in June 2013 by opening more than 200 new state-run

Internet cafes.



Etecsa was apparently surprised at how eagerly Cubans have taken to the

company's mobile e-mail service.



"A woman told me she checks her e-mail up to 80 times (a day) and that

(level of use) is more typical of a chat service. Normally people only

check their e-mail two or three times a day," Diaz told Granma. EFE



Source: Heavy use of Cuba mobile e-mail service strains cellular network

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