The Guardian:

In Cuba, internet access is limited. But if you can’t get to the internet, there are ways of bringing it physically to you.

It’s known as “el paquete semanal” or “the weekly packet”, an external drive loaded with thousands of hours of media content that is delivered to customers by enterprising ‘suppliers’ like Alberto Jorge.

I remember reading about this same story a while ago, and yet it never ceases to dumbfound me — internet access in Cuba is expensive to the point that it less convenient than having a person coming around the house regularly to deliver a dump of the data via HTP (Hand Transfer Protocol).

From a CloudFlare post of a couple of years ago:

El Paquete is a weekly service where someone (typically found through word of mouth) comes to your home with a disk (usually a 1TB external USB drive) containing a weekly download of the most recent films, soap operas, documentaries, sport, music, mobile apps, magazines, and even web sites. For 2 CUC a week Cubans have access to a huge repository of media while turning a blind eye to copyright.

Cubans told me of children waiting anxiously for “El Paquete Day” when they’d get the next set of cartoons, music and shows.

Internet non è particolarmente diffuso a Cuba. Il costo d’accesso è di circa 2$ all’ora tramite uno dei 175 hotspot WiFi pubblici, o di 1$ per MB tramite la connessione del cellulare.

Questa situazione ha portato alla nascita di El Paquete Semanal, praticamente un dump di musica, film e riviste che si trovano online. Invece di accedere a Internet direttamente, una persona — una volta alla settimana — viene a casa tua con un hard disk di circa 1TB contenente “internet”. Il contenuto è organizzato in cartelle, dentro vi si trovano interi siti, film, aggiornamenti software, applicazioni (per PC o Android), riviste in PDF e quant’altro:

Everyone I spoke to had access to Cuba’s private “CDN”: El Paquete Semanal. El Paquete is a weekly service where someone (typically found through word of mouth) comes to your home with a disk (usually a 1TB external USB drive) containing a weekly download of the most recent films, soap operas, documentaries, sport, music, mobile apps, magazines, and even web sites. For 2 CUC a week Cubans have access to a huge repository of media while turning a blind eye to copyright.

Cubans told me of children waiting anxiously for “El Paquete Day” when they’d get the next set of cartoons, music and shows.