Cuba may never achieve telecommunication infrastructure without U.S intervention

[Mika]

(A misleading headline, imo, as the second last para reveals.)

Cuba may never achieve telecommunication infrastructure without U.S intervention
http://www.insightnews.com/aesthetics.asp?mode=display&articleID=4513

The United States has a golden opportunity to help Cuban citizens obtain greater and faster Internet connectivity and the key, a fiber optic cable, is sitting in international waters off the coast of the island.

US presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain have both been to Florida to woo votes in the important swing state. Among their prime goals is to clarify their political stance regarding Cuba policy.

The candidates will have a chance to break with the current policy of excluding Cuba from new technology, which under the US blockade also extends to vital equipment in fields such as medicine, energy and the steel industry.

Allowing Cuba to hook up to the fiber optic cable would end the bantering over whose fault it is that more Cubans don't have Internet.

If the Cuban government decided not to provide greater access, even though it had the capacity, then US politicians and Cuban "dissidents" could argue that it was control of information, not a lack of access that blocked islanders from having Internet.

To date, the Bush administration has considered it more politically expedient to blame the Cuban government for the low percentage of citizens with Internet than help them gain access.


Internet in today's Cuba

While it cannot hook up to the oceanic fiber optic cable or contract the service of US Internet providers, Cuba advances in the development of a domestic fiber optic system and has made considerable progress in recent years with digitalizing around 90 percent of its telephone communications.

Nonetheless, telephone service is still limited to 10 phones for every 100 inhabitants, still below the average of 18 percent teledensity in Latin America and the Caribbean and nearly 60 percent in the US.

A home grown system, called the Intra-net, allows Cubans to receive e-mail and scroll domestic Web sites. A national network of computer clubs, post offices, and some workplaces and education facilities are the common places where people access. Some professionals with computers provided from their jobs also use the service from their homes. Demand still far exceeds supply.

Cuba's Telecommunications Ministry maintains that comprehensive Internet —connecting people to Web sites from around the world— is severely limited due to the slow and expensive satellite service currently available to the island. Thus, Internet is only available at home to researchers, journalists and some academics and executives, the prioritized groups. Hotels and cyber cafes offer the service to tourists.

For those who have Internet at home the low-bandwidth dial-up connection (between 16 and 50 kb/sec transmit speed) works OK for most sites, but is inadequate for many audio and video links.


Computers are first

Over the last six years I have witnessed a great expansion of computers on the island, an indispensable step towards both Intra-net and Internet access. The on-going nationwide strategy has targeted workplaces, businesses and schools as the top priority. Cuba assembles its own computers with components purchased abroad, largely from China.

The next step includes expanding on individual home PCs. "It's a great aspiration for all of us to have a computer," Deputy Communications Minister Roman Linares was quoted last week as saying. "But we have to be realistic, going step by step and attending the needs of the economy, the society and also the individuals," he added.

While the US could speed up the process for greater Internet access by allowing Cuba to hook up to the fiber optic cable, Linares noted that it is not the only option. He said a much more costly 1,500 kilometer cable project to connect Cuba and Venezuela and its broad-band capabilities could resolve the matter by 2010.

With Bush on the way out in January 2009, McCain, Obama or Clinton will soon have to make their decision of whether to continue trying to block Cuba's telecommunications development or take a good neighbor approach.

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[Judi Lynn]

1. Can't thank you enough. This article is surely helpful. It's almost impossible to get the truth past

the barrage of pure dinsinformation available in such profusion.

Tremendous.

Concerning plans for a Venezuelan link:

Wednesday, 11 June 2008

Venezuela-Cuba undersea link to be lit in 2010
Gran Caribe Telecommunications, a Venezuelan-Cuban joint venture, has finished mapping out a planned 1,550km underwater fiber-optic cable linking the two countries, and is in the process of designing details of the project and selecting a provider to build the system. A spokesperson for the start-up company, formed by state-run Telecom Venezuela (formerly CVG Telecom) and Cuba’s Telecommunication Signals Transport Co (Transbit), said a main supplier will be chosen in August and the submarine cabling deployed by the end of 2009 or early 2010; the system could be up and running in the first half of 2010. Gran Caribe plans to lay two pairs of fibre-optic cables running from the Venezuelan state of Vargas to the province of Santiago de Cuba, potentially increasing the island’s international communications capacity by 3,000 times. Cuba has been isolated from major international submarine cable projects, mainly due to its strained political relations with the US.

http://www.telegeography.com/cu/article.php?article_id=23541
http://www.silobreaker.com/DocumentReader.aspx?Item=5_867589632

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CUBA: Snail's-Pace Internet Is Washington's Fault
By Dalia Acosta

HAVANA, Feb 14 (IPS) - Authorities in Cuba blame the U.S. embargo for the high local cost of Internet connections, and for the serious problems in web services in this socialist Caribbean island nation.

"Despite the fact that international fibre optic cables run very close to Cuban shores, the rules of the (U.S.) blockade prevent connection to these," said Cuban Informatics and Communications Minister Ramiro Valdés.

According to Valdés, Washington agreed to Cuba's connection to the Internet in 1996, but opposed its connection to any fibre optic cable, "meaning that the nation is forced to use a satellite channel with a mere 65 Mbps (megabytes per second) broadband for output and 124 Mbps for input."

"The rules also state that any new addition to or modification of the channel requires a license from the U.S. Treasury Department," he said.

Apart from the fact that Internet access is restricted to certain sectors of the population, with fees of over 200 dollars a month for full access, the slowness of the connection is a daily problem in Cuba. "Here you don't surf, you float," said Laura Gómez, 49, a computer scientist.

"Connection via fibre optics would not only permit a faster connection, but also significantly lower costs," said Valdés at the inauguration of the international Information Technology (IT) Convention 2007, which has drawn over 1,650 experts from 58 countries to Havana this week.

Until recently, the problem seemed to depend solely on the nature of the relations between Havana and Washington. Now it will be solved by laying an undersea fibre optic cable from Cuba to Venezuela, which will allow Cuban communications to link up with other countries.

This initiative is included among the 16 bilateral agreements signed by the Cuban and Venezuelan governments on Jan. 24. In addition to establishing the international telecommunications system, the agreements cover projects in the tourism sector, oil exploration and transport.

Valdés made no mention of the possibilities opened up by this agreement, but he emphasised the progress made by the government plan to computerise society, in spite of the obstacles arising from the four-decade embargo.

According to official statistics, over 11,000 students are taking higher education degrees related to IT and telecommunications, another 38,000 are attending courses at IT polytechnics, and more than one million people have taken courses in over 600 Computer Youth Clubs all over the country.

"Our communication networks will continue to improve, and the range of equipment available will be increased and modernised, with priority being given to the sectors of greatest social relevance: health centres, education, cultural and scientific institutions," Valdés said.

According to the minister, in Cuba "all schools now posses IT and audiovisual resources as learning tools, even in the most remote centres, which run off solar power, and even if they only have one pupil."

More:
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=36567

[Judi Lynn]

2. Cuba to work around US embargo via undersea cable to Venezuela

Cuba to work around US embargo via undersea cable to Venezuela
JULIAN ASSANGE (investigative editor)
Wednesday July 15, 2008

From Santiago de Cuba to La Guaira : Cuba will be connected to the Internet by 2010

Page one of the Cuba-Venezuela confidential contract annex

“ According to the Vice Minister of Telecommunication, Boris Moreno, the government is unable to offer Cubans comprehensive Internet for their new Pcs because the American embargo prevents it from getting service directly from the United States nearby through underwater cables. Instead, Cuba gets Internet service through less reliable satellite connections, usually from faraway countries including Italy and Canada. „

— Cuba blames US for Internet restrictions, AP Newswire 16 May 2008<1> Documents released by Wikileaks reveal that Cuba and Venezuela signed a confidential contract in 2006 to lay an undersea fibre-optic cable that bypasses the United States. The cable is to be completed by 2010.

The contract between the two countries, which has been independently verified, adds weight to Cuban statements that the United States economic embargo of the island has forced it to rely on slow and expensive satellite links for Internet connectivity. Cuba is situated a mere 120 kilometres off the coast of Florida. The proposed 1,500 kilometre cable will connect Cuba, Jamaica, Haiti and Trinidad to the rest of the world via La Guaira, Venezuela.

Carrying out the work are CVG Telecom (Corporación Venezolana de Guyana) and ETC (Empresa de Telecomunicaciones de Cuba).

The leaked documents have technical details and pictures of the cable, maps, and systems to be used, parties signing the agreement, terms and conditions, costs, and a schedule of charges and compromises. The connection allows for the transmission of data, video and voice (VoIP). According to the contract, the agreement is designed to build a relationship of "strategic value" which will permit Cuba and Venezuela to, among other matters:

• Increase interchange between the two governments.
  
• Foster science, cultural and social development.
  
• Increase the volume and variety of relationships between country members of ALBA (Bolivarian Alternative for America) and the South American MERCOSUR trading block.
  
• Help serve the increasing demand of commercial traffic between Cuba, Venezuela and the rest of the world.

The contract parties state that given the diversity of foreign affairs, they wish to build a new international order, multi-polar, based in sustainability, equity and common good and that an international cable with maximum security protected by international organizations (ITU/ICPC) is crucial.

The documents disclose plans to separate commercial traffic and governmental traffic upon data arrival.

http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Cuba_to_work_around_US_embargo_via_undersea_cable_to_Venezuela