If “officials and foreign workers were allowed them”, they must have cell towers and a network – it’s actually Cubacell. So it’s actually owning a handset that was previously banned.

Russell

It would seem trivially easy for the government to ban mobiles by not allowing cellsites. They are hard to hide. And if they have them… who gets a phone?

I presume, with non-zero penetration, that mobiles are not banned, but highly restricted, mostly or entirely to government workers. Anyone know what the network is, and who installed it? Who is the carrier? More than one?

Also, with a tiny, restricted user base especially, how does anyone smuggle a useful device into the network? The device is not the issue. You still need to be provisioned /on the network/ so I don’t understand this part either.

Too much information missing.

I presume North Korea, Burma and some other whacked-out isolationist places have no mobile service also. Or, maybe, very little like this. But I have never seen a comprehensive list of them.