Cuba cuts mobile telephony charges

Mobile telephony services in Cuba are set to become more affordable following an announcement from the island’s Ministry of Information and Communications (MIC) that the cost of calls and SMS will be reduced from 1 February 2012. According to Prensa Latina, which cites MIC Resolutions 11 and 12 published on website cubadebate.cu, the cost of a text message will drop from CUC0.16 (USD0.16) to CUC0.09, while calls will fall from CUC0.6 to CUC0.45 per minute, provided that the payments are in convertible pesos. Resolution 12 establishes a calling-party-pays (CPP) system, meaning that mobile subscribers will no longer have to pay to receive calls and messages. Cuba’s sole telecoms operator is state-owned Empresa de Telecomunicaciones de Cuba (ETECSA), according to TeleGeography’s GlobalComms Database. The company had around 1.3 million mobile subscribers at the end of 2011, up from just 330,000 three years earlier.