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