Cuba's Internet Dilemma: How to Emerge From the Web's Stone Age

  • Crouching on a street corner with a laptop seeking a signal
  • Fewer than 4% of Cuban homes are allowed to go online
Noah Friedman-Rudovsky/Bloomberg
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Julio Hernandez is a telecommunications engineer, but like almost anyone else in CubaBloomberg Terminal who wants to get on the Internet, to do so he must crouch on a dusty street corner with his laptop, inhaling car exhaust and enduring sweltering heat.

That privilege costs him $2 an hour, expensive in a nation where the average state-paid salary is $20 a month.