Matthew Zeitlin writes: Netflix announced today that it is expanding its streaming service to Cuba: a country where internet access is restricted to a tiny portion of the population and the company’s $7.99 subscription fee would claim a big chunk of the typical worker’s salary of about $20 a month.
The Obama administration announced an opening of relations with Cuba in December of last year, but connections between the island and American businesses are still slim.
Before the installation of the cable from Venezuela, only slower satellite internet was available in Cuba. The only service provider is the state telecom company ETECSA, and a small portion of Cubans who apply to get internet service actually receive it, Biddle said. They’re mostly academics, high-status foreigners, and state journalists.
About a quarter of the population has some internet access, but the majority of that is to a “tightly controlled government-filtered intranet” which has email, an encyclopedia, some educational materials and websites. About 5% of Cuba’s 11 million people has true access to the world wide web.
The White House described the cost of internet access in Cuba as “exorbitantly high”.
“What Netflix is doing it is making something completely legal and possible before it’s practically possible from a technical standpoint, which then puts the pressure on the Cuban government and the U.S. government to make this stuff happen technically,” Henken said.
But while few Cubans will be binge watching Orange Is The New Black via online streaming anytime soon, more are likely to access it the old-fashioned way – via downloaded copies.
And Netflix already has an old-school competitor in Havana: A bundle of the latest TV shows and movies is distributed through an informal network. USB drives are distributed and sold throughout the country packed with video for offline watching.
