The perfect package?

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For decades, Cuba has remained under a strict blockade from the rest of the world. A combination of the state’s historical monopoly on broadcast, lax copyright laws and limited internet access has turned the country into an analogue ‘on-demand’ market. This has created the perfect environment for alternative sources of information to grow.

The most significant of these is El Paquete Semanal (‘The Weekly Package’): a 1TB bundle of content, delivered weekly to 600,000 subscribers, with the latest films, TV shows, magazines, documentaries, video games, mobile apps, and YouTube videos, all for $2. Completely offline, it’s delivered by being transferred onto customers’ hard drives.

Collated and distributed via an underground media-smuggling ring, El Paquete Semanal allows people without internet access to obtain information just days, or even hours, after it has gone online elsewhere in the world. Game of Thrones is back this April, and, as with all previous seasons, Cubans will be able to watch every episode just hours after it’s aired by HBO. Ditto The Great British Bake Off, which also features.

According to academic Fidel Alejandro Rodríguez, El Paquete Semanal is the result of an evolutionary process of cultural, technological, economic and political forces that have been in play for decades. It goes beyond a response to scarce internet in Cuba; it’s the next step in a series of actions caused by a demand for information and access to culture that’s ingrained within the national identity – the same need that led to the creation of VHS ‘banks’ in the 1990s and camouflaged illegal antennae designed to catch American TV channels in the 2000s. In a country where mobile data costs half the salary of an average Cuban, connectivity is considered a luxury and a point of difference.

Cultural researcher Hamlet López describes El Paquete Semanal as “a socio-technical platform that initially could have been born as compensation for the lack of internet access, but now has personality and its own identity”.

In fact, its product is not the content itself, but the ability to distribute quickly. Cubans aren’t just paying for Game of Thrones, they’re paying for the chance to watch it as soon as possible. They need synchronicity, and El Paquete Semanal sells it every week.

But there are a number of factors that could affect its future. The first is the increasing level of internet access – in December 2018, the Cuban government enabled universal 3G mobile internet and connectivity was slowly reaching homes in Havana. The second is the new constitution, which might eventually toughen copyright laws and eradicate piracy.

Roger Juaristi and Luis Miguel Marín of Cuban digital marketing agency HighVista, which introduced advertising content within El Paquete Semanal, believe the internet will lead to its disappearance in the next few years. The two use apps on their phones to access pirated online content and claim younger generations are more app-driven than browser-based.

But Yino, who owns an El Paquete Semanal distribution network, believes that as long as internet is unaffordable for many, his business will have subscribers. Older generations still need to learn how to interact with the web, he says, so they will keep buying the service until they feel comfortable enough to go online.

Brands looking to operate in Cuba need to understand its defining cultural values and adapt to this unique media landscape. Google now has servers in Cuba, YouTube has adapted to the country’s connection speed, and Facebook is facilitating connectivity with the rest of the world – during the recent tornado, it allowed Cubans to update one another on their safety and whereabouts.

Whatever the consequence of the changes to connectivity, Hamlet López believes Cuba is in a privileged position. “Being this late on the world wide web scene is not a disadvantage; quite the opposite,” he says. “Cubans will have the opportunity that other countries didn’t have: to think about the kind of internet we want for ourselves.”

• Cuba opened state-run internet cafes in 2013 and citizens have had access to home internet and public Wi-Fi hotspots since 2017
• Almost 50% of Cubans have a mobile phone
  
• In the first 40 days after the country began allowing 3G internet access via mobile phones, 1.8m Cubans – of a population of 11m – bought
  the packages.