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A Strategy For Attaining Cuban Internet Connectivity
lpress writes "In the mid 1990s, there was debate within the Cuban government about the Internet. A combination of pressure from the U.S. trade embargo, the financial crisis brought on by the collapse of the Soviet Union and fear of free expression led to a decision to limit Internet access. This has left Cuba with sparse, antiquated domestic infrastructure today.
Could the government improve the situation if they decided to do so? They don't have sufficient funds to build out modern infrastructure and foreign investment through privatization of telecommunication would be difficult to obtain. Furthermore, that strategy has not benefited the people in other developing nations.
A decentralized strategy using a large number of satellite links could quickly bootstrap the Cuban Internet. Decentralized funding and control of infrastructure has been an effective transitional strategy in other cases, for example, with the NSFNET in the U.S. or the Grameen Phone ladies in Bangladesh.
This proposal would face political roadblocks in both the US and Cuba; however, change is being considered in the U.S. and the Castro government has been experimenting with small business and they have begun allowing communication agents to sell telephone and Internet time. It might just work — as saying goes "Be realistic. Demand the impossible.""
Allowing Internet connectivity reduces the centralized control that a totalitarian Communist system requires in order to protect the leaders and the system itself from the inconvenience of reality.
The U.S.. and a bunch of exiles still pissed about losing their wealth from when they were Battista cronies, have a serious hate-on for Cuba. Until the Castros are dead and Cuba is a slathering U.S. lapdog, the U.S. and CIA will actively sabotage any development there.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
I question if Cuban internet access will even be useful to them. With beta, is there even an internet worth looking at?
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Cuba recently (last 18 months) had an undersea line laid from Cuba to Venezuela. Previously they could only connect via Satellite link.
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It is a myth. I don't know anyone who has been there. I haven't been there. Prove to me that there is such a place as "Cuba".
Cuba is a totalitarian communist dictatorship. That dictatorship has absolutely no interest in a decentralized Internet solution. Cuba's police state was set up by Che Guevara, who modeled it on that of his NKVD/KGB tutor, Lavrenty Beria.
The communist government has exactly zero interest in "decentralization."
Just want to say, beta is really floating my boat right now. All the greybeard whiners have gone off on their silly 'boycott', leaving the a quality slashdot audience here to enjoy the site. Let's face it, we're the future! Hip, younger, more sociable, more trend-orientated and 100% more employable than the old crowd. Dice knows where their future revenue comes from and they know it isn't with the oldsters.
Back to beta. I have a few suggestions that would really improve things even further and hopefully will make it into the final slashdot 'release':
-Slightly larger font and font spacing between lines. A lot of us read on HD tablets don't forget!
-More content that is relevant and engaging with today's IT crowd - so topics like ruby on rails, PHP, wordpress plugins, apple products, SEO. And less stuff on boring out-of-date technologies like UniX and Sun.
-More comment posting formats - like inline images, youtube vid embeds, code containers etc.
-Less comment nesting - say 2 or 3 max, to make viewing on smartphones more comfortable
-Lose the 1990s scheme! Seriously, teal? Take a look at apple or microsoft's website if you want some perfection in design with modern web standards.
-Make slashdot more social - like integrated facebook and twitter feeds on the left hand side of the page from the top 10 users or something.
Thanks! Joey.
For help, Turn to Brazil, not the USA.
But wouldn't Cuban internet be good for the US total surveillance society? Must be easier than people on the ground.
Meanwhile I'm sure the top men in Cuba hasn't been blind to the marvelous possibilities afforded such total surveillance on their end either.
Seems like the US and Cuba would have a common interest here.
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our real history of murderous acquisition by religious 'conversion' http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=unrepentant&sm=3 now known the wwworld over
This is my field... not Cuba, but IT trade in emerging markets. The second link critiquing private infrastructure investment is flawed, kind of stupid, and possibly biased (in favor of government's active participation). Look at the data on the chart and gee, it looks like the emerging markets (the author still uses the word "developing") are way behind. But you have to weight the charts by population... weighted average tells a completely different story. 3B3K (three billion people living in nations earning an average of $3,000 per year) increased internet access per capita at ten times the rate of growth of the 1.3 billion people in the OECD. By combining the fastest growing internet market of 3 billion with the 3 billion poorest people - combining say Chili and Malaysia with Sudan and Eithiopia - they create a category "developing" which is just stupid.
Internet isn't growing in countries. It's growing in cities. Huge cities like Lima, Cairo, Lagos, Karachi and Mumbai are getting online like wildfire. If government gets involved, they tend to try to run cables and highways out into the boonies. The private investment sector the paper criticizes is much more efficient, much more bang for the buck, and only looks bad if you postulate "universal coverage" as the goal, which may be noble but who pays for it and by putting government in charge do you get in the way of the enormous progress in the cities? Look to Cuba for an example of a government which tries to control it and winds up without the access in Havana that you can find in any similar large city which allows private investment to cover the cheapest kilometer of cable, the 20% of cell phone towers in reach of 80% of the users.
Gently reply
Cuba is a totalitarian police state. The problem is not too little infrastructure, it's too much oppression. And I don't see how an initiative like this could change the situation.
If Cuba built its own onion routing network (perhaps using Tor software though not connected to the Tor network), then each satellite dish or other internet connection would automatically be able to facilitate connectivity for the rest of the network. No need to wire anything (except some of the exit nodes), this can all happen over wifi.
Don't forget that 802.11af, 802.11y, and 802.22 have ranges measured in miles (802.22 can cover 100km). Blanketing an island of 110km would still take a good number of antennae (especially given the dead zones created by dense buildings in cities), but at a governmental budget scale, it seems quite feasible.
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Wouldn't it face the same issues?
As far as internet, the people may wish to look at mesh wifi setups.
Let's cut to the chase here - the US is not the reason why Cuba's government suppresses human rights and other aspects of modern civilization such as property ownership, education, access to health care, access to food, shelter, travel and freedom of expression. Cuban citizens have few if any rights to protest or challenge government policy. Those that do have historically been beaten, jailed or executed.
Access to the internet is just the latest example. What Cuba needs is a reformed economy that allows people to be rewarded financially for their efforts.
Slashdot editorial policy has consistently been to romanticize the Cuban communist-socialist revolution, while sugar coating the corruption and violence against the Cuban people.
You are kidding, right? I'm a Cuban-American, grew up in Miami. Mom fled while she could, grand-parents got out in the final stages of their lives when they became a burden on the Cuban state. We hosted refugees from the Mariel boat-lift in our home in Miami and saw Miami transformed by the mass migration of Cubans to the US.
People are wards of the state. They attend government run schools where they are indoctrinated in socialist-communist ideology. They are taught to worship a man Fidel Castro whom they have no right to vote in or out of office.
Cuba is going to get the internet? We gotta stop this! How about we set up an embargo for 25 years or more and starve children for the sins of their fathers? We can starve generations of people...just because we can. That will teach them that our way is the right way.
Seriously, you dumb fucking Americans, how can you live with yourselves knowing that you choose to kill children THAT WERE NOT EVEN AROUND WHEN YOU STARTED TO EMBARGO THESE COUNTRIES? Fuck you.
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The best way to keep a totalitarian ideological government in power is to limit communications with the outside and continue to give it enemies to justify the government's existence. The US government has been trying as hard as possible to keep doing this for decades.
The US economic embargo has severely limited telephone communications with Cuba for decades, and more recently has limited Internet connectivity, and the travel policy has limited US tourism and family visits from "corrupting" Cubans by exposure to foreigners and foreign ideas. And the Cuban government has been just fine with that; it means that they get to control the limited amount of internet connectivity coming into their country and make sure that only the ideologically correct people get access. The embargo meant that the US telephone companies couldn't pay the Cuban telcos their share of the costs for the undersea cables to Cuba or for the phone calls from the US to Cubans, and they couldn't accept payments from the Cuban telcos even when the Cubans could acquire enough US dollars to pay them.
Maybe that's started to loosen up under Obama, but realistically it's not going too get better until the Republicans and Democrats stop believing that support from Old Cuban Exiles is critical to maintaining Republican political control in Florida, and given the Bush/Gore election tie, that's not going to happen for a long time.
Bill Stewart
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