Cuba to invest more than $70 million in telecom industry in 2003

[Say_What]

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Havana, Nov 12 (EFE).- Cuba plans to invest some $74 million in the telecommunications industry this year, Cuban Information and Communications Minister Ignacio Gonzalez Planas said.

At a meeting of the Hispanic-American Association of Research Centers and Telecommunications, which kicked off Monday in this capital, Gonzalez Planas said investment in the telecom sector would result in service improvements in cellular telephony, particularly in remote areas.

The minister added that these efforts were in response to the growing use of computer technology in Cuba and future applications of new technologies in infrastructure, an expanding computer culture and growing research, software and customer service industries.

Gonzalez Planas said he expected Cuba's current national average of six telephone lines per 100 people and 14 telephone lines per 100 residents in the capital to improve this year.

http://www.efenews.com/includesasp/noticias.asp?opcion=1&id=5636061

[Judi Lynn]

1. It's amazing how far the Cuban people have come

They started off with a true handicap when bloody U.S.-supported dictator Fulgencio Batista and his close associates looted the Cuban National Treasury before fleeing during the second revolution.

It's good policy for Cuba to keep very open and public now about the progress they're making, reporting it to the rest of the world, to break through the deep isolation our worst politicians tried to keep around it.

People here make the mistake of trying to compare their standard of living to our own, while they are, after all, part of the Caribbean community, sharing the handicaps bourn by all of the other islands, and smaller Latin American countries, while acheiving the highest life expectancy, lowest infant mortality, and best literacy levels in Latin America.