Cuba is currently poorly served by the Internet with a small number of public WiFi hotspots. <...> Getting on the WiFi means buying a card that gives you access for 2 CUC ($2) per hour. <...> The overall story is that currently there is limited access to the Internet but that it is expensive (especially for Cubans).

    To work around this problem everyone I spoke to had access to Cuba’s private “CDN”: El Paquete Semanal. El Paquete is a weekly service where someone (typically found through word of mouth) comes to your home with a disk (usually a 1TB external USB drive) containing a weekly download of the most recent films, soap operas, documentaries, sport, music, mobile apps, magazines, and even web sites. For 2 CUC a week Cubans have access to a huge repository of media while turning a blind eye to copyright.

This is brilliant. Basically, you have all the Internet you need in (what amounts to) analogue way.

In the translated article that led me to this one, I've also found out about the Iranian TV Internet. If you turn your TV set to a specific channel, you get encoded .MPEG data that a program translates into a .RAR archive. Quite ingenious, what people can do when faced with obstacles.


posted 2801 days ago