"Necessity is the mother of our invention," said the philosopher Plato in the Republic, and in Cuba there are so many needs that Cubans "spend their time inventing."
One of the latest creations from the clever minds of the Island are the antennas to capture the internet signal, made from recycled materials and connected to a device where users place their terminals to connect to the mobile data network.
A video shared by the Instagram user identified as Yoslin showed the antennas that proliferated on the rooftops of a Cuban settlement where mobile internet signal does not reach.
Without specifying the location, the user entered one of the houses that had the aforementioned antennas and demonstrated how it works, consisting of placing the cell phone in a handmade case connected to the antenna, so that the mobile phone receives the internet signal.
"Almost everyone has an antenna. It's because there's no good coverage here, there's no signal... And look at this invention: that little device there allows you to connect! Look at the cable that goes down to the phone. This is the latest, not even Mark Zuckerberg knows what this is!" said the user in their recording.
At the end of July, a Cuban revealed on social media that residents in rural towns of the province of Holguín were using a "device" made from a pressure cooker lid that acted as an antenna, and that this helped improve internet connectivity.
The internet user reported that upon arriving in the town of Bariay, in the municipality of Rafael Freyre in Holguín, he saw many houses that had something resembling a television antenna on the outside, “but strange.”
Upon inquiry, they told him it was an invention that enhanced coverage reach. "The antenna is made up of a pressure cooker lid with an aluminum ring to which a cable (it looks coaxial) is connected, leading to a curious little wooden box. In that box, the cell phone is placed, and the coverage reach is boosted," he explained.
At the end of May, the communications monopoly in Cuba, ETECSA, claimed that its internet service is the cheapest in the entire Caribbean.
According to Lidia Esther Hidalgo Rodríguez, the commercial vice president of the state-owned company, it was possible to patent this fact considering the parameters of the informal exchange rate: "One gigabyte of mobile data is equivalent to 0.17 dollars," she declared to the official newspaper Granma.
The referred "lower correlation across the Caribbean" is ridiculous and controversial, considering that 88% of Cubans live below the poverty line and the country's minimum wage is 2,100 CUP per month, around six dollars approximately (according to the informal exchange rate), below the extreme poverty threshold (defined by the World Bank as 2.15 dollars in total daily income).
As the only telecommunications company in the country, ETECSA has 7.8 million mobile users, of which 7.3 million are enabled to use mobile internet. However, less than eight percent of Cuban households have access to the internet. Regarding mobile telephony, access is at 71.2% of the population.
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