Cubans line up for cell phone service

An article Friday in the Communist Party newspaper Granma said it was Fidel Castro's idea all along to lift bans on mobile phones, and that he was behind recent government orders easing restrictions that had prevented most Cubans from staying in hotels, renting cars, enjoying beaches reserved for tourists and buying DVD players and other consumer goods.

"They are part of a process initiated and called for by Fidel," the paper said of the recent changes.

Fidel Castro has not been seen in public since undergoing emergency intestinal surgery in July 2006, but he has continued to pen essays every few days and recently criticized DVDs, cell phones, the Internet, e-mail and Facebook, asking: "Does the kind of existence promised by imperialism make any sense?"

He wrote Saturday that the island may be going too far in easing some restrictions: "As in Cuba, there are those with theories about easy access to consumer goods," he wrote, dismissing those people as "imperial ears and eyes hungry for these dreams."

Cell phones on the island can make and receive calls from overseas, a key feature because the overwhelming majority of Cubans have relatives and friends in the United States.

Cuba's state-controlled telecommunications monopoly, a joint venture with Telecom Italia, charges US$2.70 (euro1.70) per minute to call the U.S. and US$5.85 (euro3.70) per minute to Europe and most of the rest of the world. Making or receiving local calls costs US$0.30 (euro0.19) a minute.