A few more months and Cuba will eventually be the only nation isolated from the global telecommunications network. At least from a technical point of view, because the internet in the island of Fidel Castro is still subject to heavy censorship. Tomorrow, at Siboney, near Santiago de Cuba, the ship should land the French company Alcatel-Lucent, which two weeks ago in La Guaira, Venezuela, has begun laying fiber-optic submarine cable that will connect the island with the rest of the world: 1552 km of cables for a $ 70 million project funded by the Dawn, the program of political and economic cooperation for Latin America begun in 2004, Havana-Caracas axis.
The plant, which should be activated in July, with its 640 gigabytes of capacity will be a revolution for the Cuban telecommunications system, which still depends on satellites, burdened by the slow pace and high cost. The fiber optics will allow data exchange and sharing of audio, pictures and videos at a rate of 3,000 times higher than today.
However it is unclear whether this rate will only serve to strengthen the state apparatus or even to accelerate the isolation of 10 million Cubans. And that's the crux of the matter in a country where an hour of Internet connection costs 6 convertible pesos (4.80 euro), or one third of a monthly salary of a professional, and where until 2008 it was illegal to possess a computer.
Today only 12% of the population uses the Internet, but the web is strictly controlled, except for some categories (party officials, academics, doctors, judges, tourism operators) have their own email account is illegal. Security printing (Granma and Juventud Rebelde) speaks generally of "strengthening the sovereignty and national security" and "improvement of telecommunications services," but makes no reference to free access to information by citizens.
In this context, it is credible to some skepticism about the real objectives of the project: "This sea connection seems more intended to check on that to get in touch with the world - he wrote the note on the blog Generación Y dissident Yoani Sanchez - but I am confident that we can subvert its initial purpose.
" "The new network will serve to break the criminal U.S. blockade against our country," said Cuban ambassador in Venezuela Rogelio Polanco, and you can not deny that the effects of the U.S. embargo in the past have, among other things , prevented the development of a modern telecommunications system.
But the blockade (embargo so Cubans call it) for a long time is no longer the formidable alibi with which Havana has justified every internal problem for decades, especially after the measures taken in 2009 by Barack Obama to ease the crunch. In addition to the withdrawal of some measures taken by Bush (restrictions on sending remittances and travel to Cuba of migrants), the White House has authorized the local telephone companies to enter into agreements with Cuba for the installation of telecommunications infrastructure, including cables fiber optics.
A few months later Telecuba, a company based in Miami, presented a project easier and cheaper than that then undertaken with Venezuela: 177 km line from Florida to Cuba, at a cost of $ 18 million. But the green light to the project never arrived in Havana: Cuban authorities asked phone companies to pay U.S.
Etecsa (the state telephone company) 84 cents for each minute of call, according to Washington too. It is curious that a project has been scrapped so convenient, and perhaps the reasons lie elsewhere. The bureaucrats of the Plaza de la Revolución might find it more "safe and governable a link that arrives from the south, the beaches of his friend Chavez, rather than from the north, the Florida that was the culmination of many exiles, and that could have become the termination window from which to view the world.
Mark Todarello 
The plant, which should be activated in July, with its 640 gigabytes of capacity will be a revolution for the Cuban telecommunications system, which still depends on satellites, burdened by the slow pace and high cost. The fiber optics will allow data exchange and sharing of audio, pictures and videos at a rate of 3,000 times higher than today.
However it is unclear whether this rate will only serve to strengthen the state apparatus or even to accelerate the isolation of 10 million Cubans. And that's the crux of the matter in a country where an hour of Internet connection costs 6 convertible pesos (4.80 euro), or one third of a monthly salary of a professional, and where until 2008 it was illegal to possess a computer.
Today only 12% of the population uses the Internet, but the web is strictly controlled, except for some categories (party officials, academics, doctors, judges, tourism operators) have their own email account is illegal. Security printing (Granma and Juventud Rebelde) speaks generally of "strengthening the sovereignty and national security" and "improvement of telecommunications services," but makes no reference to free access to information by citizens.
In this context, it is credible to some skepticism about the real objectives of the project: "This sea connection seems more intended to check on that to get in touch with the world - he wrote the note on the blog Generación Y dissident Yoani Sanchez - but I am confident that we can subvert its initial purpose.
" "The new network will serve to break the criminal U.S. blockade against our country," said Cuban ambassador in Venezuela Rogelio Polanco, and you can not deny that the effects of the U.S. embargo in the past have, among other things , prevented the development of a modern telecommunications system.
But the blockade (embargo so Cubans call it) for a long time is no longer the formidable alibi with which Havana has justified every internal problem for decades, especially after the measures taken in 2009 by Barack Obama to ease the crunch. In addition to the withdrawal of some measures taken by Bush (restrictions on sending remittances and travel to Cuba of migrants), the White House has authorized the local telephone companies to enter into agreements with Cuba for the installation of telecommunications infrastructure, including cables fiber optics.
A few months later Telecuba, a company based in Miami, presented a project easier and cheaper than that then undertaken with Venezuela: 177 km line from Florida to Cuba, at a cost of $ 18 million. But the green light to the project never arrived in Havana: Cuban authorities asked phone companies to pay U.S.
Etecsa (the state telephone company) 84 cents for each minute of call, according to Washington too. It is curious that a project has been scrapped so convenient, and perhaps the reasons lie elsewhere. The bureaucrats of the Plaza de la Revolución might find it more "safe and governable a link that arrives from the south, the beaches of his friend Chavez, rather than from the north, the Florida that was the culmination of many exiles, and that could have become the termination window from which to view the world.
Mark Todarello
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