Cuban home connectivity prices leaked (with a tidbit at the end of the post)

Diario de Cuba reported that Etecsa will begin selling home Internet connectivity in September. Prime time prices will be:

The night time price (8PM - 7AM) will be 20 CUC for 90 hours, with a charge of 20 convertible centavos per hour after the limit is exceeded.

Access to the Cuban intranet will cost less, but they did not give prices.

They reported that ADSL service will be available in some areas, but said nothing about where. My guess is that most users will be restricted to dial up connections. It also remains to be seen which, if any, Web sites will be blocked.

At these prices, there will be a lot of overhead slack for home owners to sign up for a plan then resell access to others.

Here is the interesting tidbit:

The post shifts topics near the end, with a brief undersea cable discussion, saying that an unnamed ETECSA official said that the US Government had approved an $18 million proposal for an undersea cable connection between Florida and Cuba in 2010. Cuba opted instead for the $70 million ALBA-1 cable.

Has the US approval been documented? If Cuba did in fact turn it down in favor of ALBA-1 (or both), one cannot help suspecting corruption.
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Update 3/9/2014

Etecsa has announced yet another expensive service, mobile intranet email for 1 CUC per megabyte sent or received.

Cuban mobile Internet prices

Cuban authorities have announced that mobile Internet services will be available on the island soon at a maximum rate of 1 Cuban Convertible Peso (CUC) per megabyte of data transferred. (1 CUC = 1.14 USD).

As far as I know, they have said nothing about the technology (3G or 4G?) or the locations in which it will be available.

But, they did announce the cost, and in case you imagined Cubans streaming Netflix movies or Pandora songs to their mobile phones. let's look at the cost of doing so at the published rate:

These are Apple's conservative file size estimates.

(Lest you consider the Cuban costs outrageous, consider that, if Apple had charged the same rate for song downloads as your friendly US phone company was charging for text message bits a few years ago, a song would have cost you $5,486).

Mobile Internet access at these prices are well beyond the means of ordinary Cubans even if they only do a little Web browsing and email. In the past, the Cuban government has justified high Internet prices by saying they were needed to ration scarce international satellite bandwidth, but, now that the ALBA 1 undersea cable is operating, what is the justification for these prices?

ETECSA plans to offer Mobile Internet access and email

A brief post on CubaDebate says ETECSA will be offering mobile Internet access this summer.

But, there are no details. Where will the new service be available? What will it cost? What technology will it use?

ETECA attributes this modernization and extension of service to increased foreign exchange.  (They also reduced calling and texting rates recently -- I assume that is payments for service, not investment).

Does anyone know more about this planned offering?