Cubans line up to buy newspapers at a newsstand in Havana. [Photo/Agencies]

Not so fast

Still, the country is not exactly jumping to light speed.

"Time may be moving quickly by Cuban standards, but not by the standards of the rest of the world," says Michael Shifter, president of the Inter-American Dialogue research institute.

"For most Cubans, life remains unchanged even to this day."

Nearly six decades after the Cuban Revolution, a Castro is still in power, the US embargo remains in place and the island's economy is 80 percent controlled by the state.

Foreign investment is limited, and requires navigating a labyrinthine bureaucracy.

"Foreign corporations have a hard time understanding why things take so much longer here. A contract that would take three or four months somewhere else takes a year or two," says cellphone maker Nokia's Cuba representative Charles Ferrer.

Cuba is stuck in "a different dimension of time", says Cuban economist Pavel Vidal, who teaches in Colombia.

Raul Castro's economic reforms, he says, could have been "faster and broader".

The president has said he will implement his reforms "without hurry, but without pausing".

But with the 85-year-old leader preparing to hand over power in February 2018, he may now be the one who finds time running short.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE