Exporting services from a country with no decent broadband


Posted on June 12, 2015  /  0 Comments

We have this interest in cellar dwellers. Cuba has been in the bottom 10 of mobile and Internet for long. But entrepreneurs are still exporting services from that country. The NYT story does not spell out how they receive payments. There must be a workaround for that too.

Many who work at the University of Information Sciences, or UCI, near Havana, or the José Antonio Echeverría Higher Polytechnic Institute, or Cujae (pronounced Coo-hai), moonlight as freelance programmers, using the institutes’ broadband to transfer large files, software developers said.

Others buy dial-up connections on the black market — for about $200 per month — or rent time on wireless connections at big hotels. The smoky lobby of the Habana Libre hotel in downtown Havana serves as an office for Cubans who write software, build apps, unblock or fix mobile telephones, or rent houses. They huddle daily on deep armchairs and pay $8 per hour for Wi-Fi.

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