Two young school girls are introduced to computers in a school in Havana in 2006. ( Photo: Seb )
Caracas, Kingston and Alcatel-Lucent allow Havana to circumvent the embargo through a submarine cable.
A fiber optic cable along the 1600 km is currently deployed from the coast of Venezuela to the eastern region of Cuba. It will enable the island to increase its capacity by 3000 to connect. The arrival French ship Ile de Batz at the port of Siboney in the province of Santiago de Cuba, is scheduled for February 8. From there, the extension of submarine cable fiber optics will extend further than 230 km to reach Jamaica, in what is considered by authorities as a "regional integration project."
Effect of Alba
The installation works are insured by a subsidiary of the French company Alcatel-Lucent, the Chinese Shanghai Bell, and represent an investment of approximately 70 million dollars. But the project administration will be dependent a company 100% Cuban-Venezuelan public Telecomunicaciones Gran Caribe, created as part of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (Alba).
The cable, which should be operational from July, has an estimated life of twenty-five years in Cuba and provide a connection capacity of 640 gigabits. Currently, the island has only 209 megabits per second and 379 megabits output input from information published on the website of Radio Habana Cuba (RHC).
Cuba was so far the only country in the continent U.S. not to be connected to the world by the network of submarine fiber optics. The U.S. embargo still imposed until recently the additional costs prohibitive to Havana to connect to the cable which connects Cancun to Miami, and yet spends 32 kilometers off the Cuban capital.
According to statements by its local manager, Jose Ignacio Quintero, Alcatel-Lucent has also had to take precautions against the blockade. The representative of the firm assured the Venezuelan press that no entity or any U.S. citizen not involved in the project, "to not exposed to any kind of sanction.
Internet for all?
This exclusion of the global network so far forced Cuba to connect to the internet via satellite, a replacement slow and costly . But the installation of new cable does not necessarily mean an immediate mass access to the web. Officially, the "technological and financial failures" prevent more widespread connectivity. According to Ramon Linares, Cuban Deputy Minister of Computers and telecommunications, "the priority is to pursue the creation of collective centers Internet access and strengthen connections in the scientific research centers, educational centers and health of the country ".
The low telephone density of the island is one of the limitations of order technique for the massive deployment of Internet, but it should however be advanced in the medium term. According to statements from top officials at RHC, "All Cubans who have the phone should, in principle, be entitled to an internet connection ". The question is whether the political will.
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Article published in the daily Swiss Courier February 2, 2011
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