As I told you in my introductory post
, I am from Cuba, a small island in the Caribbean. We have many peculiarities in our traditions and culture, but as the title of this post indicates, one of the most interesting is in relation to the Internet.
First steps 💡
Until 2014, only universities and some state companies had access to the internet, in that year, the only telecommunications company on the island: ETECSA, began to enable the so-called "WiFi Parks", public parks where a Wi-Fi router was installed that gave internet access. To connect to that Wi-Fi network, you had to first buy a prepaid card from ETECSA, that contained the connection time (this system still exists), although the prices were quite prohibitive for the average Cuban at that time.
This same excessive cost of connection, and the absence of Wi-Fi parks in many parts of the island, led to the famous "Paquete Semanal" (Weekly Package).
The Weekly Package 📦
The weekly package is a 100% Cuban phenomenon, which emerged to offer an alternative to those who did not have enough money to connect in a Wi-Fi park. This is a compendium of movies, series, shows, novels, APKs, digital magazines, computer programs and even YouTube videos. Which are downloaded on the island by people with access to high-bandwidth connections. This compendium is circulated throughout the island, thus allowing Cubans to have access to a kind of "offline internet" with the contents of their interest.
Mobile Internet 📱
In December 2018, we had access to the mobile internet for the first time, and this has meant a huge change in the lives of many Cubans. For the first time in a long time, families were able to see each other again through WhatsApp (the diaspora of Cubans living abroad is quite large), and little by little many Cubans have begun to live on the internet. We began to have our first youtubers, influncers and e-commerce began to take its first steps, with sites like MERCAZONA(excuse the Spam😅) or the infinity of sales groups on Facebook that appeared. But well this is material for another post ...
Cut off from the world ⛔️
As a result of the sanctions of the United States against the island, there are countless sites and companies that deny us access to their services and content on the Internet, the infamous 403. For this reason, and in keeping with our spirit of overcoming problems and seeking solutions, almost all Cubans have become accustomed to using VPNs. The censorship of the internet by ETECSA due to the recent social protests in July, further confirmed this custom. For these reasons, every day millions of Cubans connect to the network not from Cuba but falsifying their location
A New Hope... 🙏
A service that we have completely out of our reach is online payments, no payment platform like PayPal or Stripe accepts Cubans and it is not possible to circumvent them with just a VPN.
But once again we find a solution: #Cryptocurrencies. The use of cryptocurrencies has allowed Cubans for the first time to be able to purchase products and services or send money online, something we only dreamed of previously.
For this reason, more and more Cubans know more about cryptocurrencies, blockchain and decentralization. Today we are hundreds of thousands, in a few years we will undoubtedly be millions.
The Next Step 🚀
Web 3.0 and decentralized services like those hosted at #HIVE, are a dream of what the internet should be. A place where censorship and sanctions cannot reach you, for cubans, this technology is a new hope to finally "integrate" into the world, like leaving our island for the first time ...