US phone-card company strikes deal with Cuba

A New Jersey-based company has struck the first publicly announced deal under reforms enacted this year that allow U.S. telecom firms to do business with Cuba.

IDT Corp.’s deal with Cuban state telecoms firm ETECSA will affect its sales of international calling cards to immigrant communities in the U.S. and its business connecting calls between phone companies in different countries, CEO Bill Pereira told The Associated Press on Friday. […]

Outside experts blame the high cost of calls in and out of Cuba, among the world’s most expensive, on the country’s use of its monopoly on telecommunications to generate badly needed foreign exchange for the entire communist government.

Pereira said it wasn’t yet clear that his company’s deal would make it cheaper for people to call friends and family in Cuba. …

I was in St Maarten a couple weeks ago. When I was there 6 yrs ago, there were a lot of small Citroens and Peugeots on the streets, reflecting the French affiliation of half the island.

Now most of those have been replaced by Kias and Hyundais. I asked a taxi driver, he said “French cars are sheet, mon. The transmissions don’t hold up here with the hills”

I can’t post this link enough times ...

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2015/02/did_anybody_tell_rep_pelosi_about_the_hotel_that_she_stayed_in_cuba.html

“The Hotel Saratoga was purchased in 1939 by Blanco Lopez and Co.

In 1959, The Hotel Saratoga was confiscated by the Castro regime.

In 1999, a British company, Coral Capital Group Ltd., entered into a minority partnership with the Castro regime to transform (a then-dilapidated) Hotel Saratoga into a chic, modern, 5-star property.

Coral Capital invested over $75 million in its partnership with Castro.

In 2005, the Hotel Saratoga reopened as the swankiest hotel in Havana.

But, as always, Castro got greedy and wanted it all for himself.

Thus, in 2011, Castro confiscated Coral Capital’s minority stake in the Hotel Saratoga.

And for giggles, he had Coral Capital’s two senior executives in Cuba, Amado Fahkre and Stephen Purvis, imprisoned in the notorious torture facility known as Villa Marista (akin to Moscow’s infamous Lubyanka).

Fahkre and Purvis spent nearly two years arbitrarily imprisoned, had all their assets confiscated and were finally expelled to Britain.

Gotta love that castro.

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