One of the reasons I particularly enjoyed my vacation in Cuba was the chance to really pull off the plug and have time for reading, thinking, finding new ideas and planning my next projects.
The reason? The almost total absence of connection with friends and family, net of some sms to make sure everything went for the best.
Internet and Wi-Fi in Cuba are in fact a luxury good and well controlled by the regime, the fixed network is almost non-existent and seldom you will find ethernet ports to connect your laptop, not even in hotels.
There is only one national telephone company, ETECSA, which operates all fixed and mobile voice services and has installed a number of WiFi hotspots in the main squares of (almost) all Cuban cities.
Once you have purchased an ETECSA card, you can connect to one of the hotspots and navigate for 1 hour at a cost of 1.5 CUC.
There are some maps to find hotspots, but there is an infallible way of discovering connection sites: look for the Cuban mobs with your cell phone in your hand!
You will also find some hotels where you can find a “private WiFi” but do not illusions: the cost and the speed of navigation are the same as the public ones!
During the trip, I then have a couple of ETECSA cards to connect from time to time and share some pictures of the holiday, communicate with some friends, check the mail fast and check in when returning using public networks, thankfully with Avira Phantom VPN the connection was safe!