Castro expands cell-phone ownership

Many hope Raul Castro’s decree is just the first of many to improve their lives.

HAVANA (AP) — First microwaves, now cell phones. Is this the new Cuba?

Raul Castro is revolutionizing his brother’s island in small but significant ways — the latest in a decree Friday allowing ordinary Cubans to have cell phone service, a luxury previously reserved for the select few. The new president could be betting greater access to such modern gadgets will quell demand for deeper change.

Many Cubans hope cell phones and new appliances are only the beginning for a post-Fidel Castro government that will improve their lives. Communist bureaucracy currently limits everything from Internet access to home ownership.

Could cellular phones in dissidents’ hands give state security forces an edge in monitoring their conversations or tracking their movements by satellite? Perhaps, but government opponents — including the few who have cell phones — already assume someone’s always listening.

Until now, the only people legally allowed to have a cell plan were foreigners, Cubans working for foreign companies and top government officials. Thousands more illegally use phones registered to foreign friends or relatives.

“Finally. We have waited too long for this,” said Elizabeth, a middle-aged housewife waiting in line to pay her home telephone bill. She wouldn’t give her last name because she already has a cell phone through a foreign co-worker of her husband’s.

The new program could put phones in the hands of hundreds of thousands of Cubans, especially those with relatives abroad who send them hard currency. But they will remain out of reach for most on the island because minutes are billed in convertible pesos — which cost Cubans 24 times the regular pesos they are paid in.

“I’d love one!” said Juan Quiala, a retiree living on a $10 monthly pension. “But how am I going to pay for it?”

The government controls over 90 percent of the economy, and although the communist system ensures most Cubans have free housing, education and health care and receive ration cards that cover basic food needs, the average monthly state salary is less than $20.

Nobody should expect to see iPhones for sale in Havana anytime soon. Although visitors who bring their Internet-equipped phones to Cuba can use them through Cuba’s network, Cuba’s cellular phone company offers such phones to only a limited number of corporate clients.

And despite cell-phone images from Tibet and Myanmar that gave the world a glimpse of repression in those closed societies, Cuba has made no attempt to ban phones with photo or video technology. In fact, some models are sold in government-run stores, and Cubans with illegally registered phones already use them to send snapshots off the island.

Of course, if unrest were to develop, Cuba’s phone monopoly could close down such transmissions with the flick of a switch.