Havana, Jan 22: At a downtown Havana post office, Cubans line up for hours for their turn in the "surfing room."
When users get to one of the four computers, they can send and receive e-mail and surf an Intranet of Cuban Web sites, but access to the global Internet is barred.
Getting online is not easy in communist-run Cuba, where the state strictly controls all Web servers and recently announced plans to crack down on illegal Internet access.
E-mail accounts are available at the Cuban Postal Service, but writing to friends abroad comes at price: A three-hour prepaid card costs $4.50, one-third of the average Cuban monthly wage.

"It's very expensive for us, but this is the only way we can send e-mails at will," said Ignacio, a health ministry employee, facing a two-hour wait.
At the recently opened Servi-Postal cybercafe in Havana's leafy Miramar district, Cubans who can afford the dollar prices wash down ham and cheese sandwiches with cold Bucanero beers.
But even here Cubans don't get to surf the World Wide Web.
"The Internet is for foreigners. The Intranet is for Cubans," said Miguel Perez, managing the cybercafe in Havana's International Business Center where Cubans have to show identification and sign a contract to get an e-mail account.
Cubans say some small cybercafes do allow them Internet access, including the National Academy of Sciences cybercafe where users are charged $5 an hour.
But President Fidel Castro's government, in power since a 1959 revolution, maintains that restricting access to the Internet is necessary for the social good in poor developing countries where the telecommunications infrastructure is insufficient.
Castro's criticritics say Cuba, like China, represses access to the Internet to stop the free flow of information and keep the lid on dissent in the one-party state. Bureau Report