Cubans Rush Buy Cell Phones After Ban Lifted

Cuba’s new president, Raul Castro, has quickly dispensed with many of the small but infuriating restrictions put in place by former President Fidel Castro.   

Raul Castro took over as president of Cuba in February, after Fidel formally stepped down amid failing health.  

Under Fidel’s government, citizens of Cuba had only limited access to modern conveniences such as cell phones, kitchen appliances, hotels and other luxuries. The restrictions were an attempt to create economic equality for all of the communist country’s citizens.

Since 1991, only foreigners and Cubans holding key government positions were allowed to have cell phones. Thousands of ordinary citizens had already obtained mobile phones via the black market, but could only get them activated by finding willing foreigners to lend their names to the contracts.

Since taking office, Raul Castro has seen a surge in his popularity by removing many of the cumbersome restrictions.  

An announcement made March 28 by Cuba’s state-controlled telecommunications monopoly made it legal for all Cubans to have phones in their own names. The new contracts allow Cubans to make and receive overseas calls, a key feature since the vast majority have friends and family in the United States.

Lines stretched for blocks Monday as ordinary citizens signed up for cellular phone service for the first time. The contracts cost about $120 to activate, equivalent to six months wages on the average state salary, not including a phone or credit to make and receive calls. Nevertheless, the lines began forming before stores even opened, and waiting times grew to over an hour.

"It’s great. It’s really great. And everyone wants to be first to sign up," said Usan Astorga, a 19-year-old medical student waiting in line to sign up for mobile phone service, told the Associated Press. Astorga planned to purchase about $55 in phone credits, enough for three months of very short calls.

"You can’t talk all day because it’s too expensive," she said. "It’s only, ‘hello, I’m here. Goodbye.’ Or ‘where are you?’ and hang up."

Astorga waited with about 90 others in a line that crossed the street and stretched for about half a block outside a phone store in a pedestrian mall in Havana’s Central Park. Meanwhile, the line split in two and spread out in different directions outside a phone store in the upscale neighborhood of Miramar.

Teenagers and college students with expensive sunglasses and fashionable clothes were in the majority, with elderly housewives and an occasional construction worker with dusty boots also waiting to sign up for their first cell phone contract.

Long lines outside stores are common in Cuba, as security forces keep tight limits on the number of people allowed in the store at any given time. Phone centers in particular are especially crowded as many wait to pay their home telephone bills.

But Monday’s waits were far beyond what would normally be seen, and everyone who turned up was waiting for a cell phone contract.

"I am in need, I need to have one," Juana Verdez, a retiree, told the Associated Press.

People also were lining up for cell phones in Cuba’s second largest city of Santiago, although residents said the lines were not as long as in Havana. Elsewhere in the country waits were decidedly shorter.

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