Havana.– Cuba may boast a doctor on every block and schools for all its children, but when it comes to telephones, computers and the Internet it lags behind other countries in the hemisphere, a report showed on Thursday.

The National Statistics Office released 2008 telecommunications data showing there were 1.4 million telephones, fixed and mobile, in the country of 11.2 million inhabitants. This gave a total density of 12.6 telephones per 100 inhabitants, the lowest in the region, according to the United Nations International Telecommunications Union.

Computers were also scarce at just 630,000 and most were believed to be in government offices, health facilities and schools. The report said 13 percent of Cuba's population had Internet access, but in most cases this was to a government Intranet. No data was available for access to the worldwide web, but diplomats and residents say it is severely restricted.

In Jamaica, Internet access was 53.27 per 100 inhabitants, the Dominican Republic 25.87 percent and in Haiti 10.42 percent, the ITU reported.

In a reform introduced by President Raul Castro after he took over from his ailing brother, Fidel, in February last year, Cubans were given permission to freely buy and use cellphones. But they can only pay for them in hard currency equivalent convertible pesos, which are not available to all Cubans. The government pegs the Cuban convertible currency (CUC) at $1.08.

In a move in April easing some aspects of Washington's 47-year-old embargo against Cuba, President Barack Obama allowed U.S. telecommunications firms to offer services in Cuba as part of a strategy to try to increase "people to people" contact.