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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.
Cuba recently (last 18 months) had an undersea line laid from Cuba to Venezuela. Previously they could only connect via Satellite link.
moox. for a new generation.
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."
For help, Turn to Brazil, not the USA.
I've been there, and I will be there again by this time Saturday. I can hardly fucking wait, I'm so sick of winter! Oh and I have pics to prove I was there.
Take a look at apple or microsoft's website if you want some perfection.
You must be new here. You can't be *both* an Apple and a Microsoft fanboy; you must choose sides.
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.
Use my userscript to add story images to Slashdot. There's no going back.
Rent a boat in Key West and sail it due south. Let us know if you bump into anything.
Just a conspiracy of cartographers, then?
Well done, I got down to your third bullet before I realised you were trolling. Try to get in a little earlier for more exposure next time.
Is 1563649 a prime number?
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.
I believe most 'Cuban' cigars are remarked 'Hondurans' (don't ever go to www.justfakes.com). Not sure about the refugees. If I was on a boat coming from Haiti, I'd claim to be Cuban.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
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.
Consider the possibility that you don't know as much about Cuba as you think. Over the past 50 years, a peculiar political culture had taken root in Miami which led to rampant speculation and the unchecked spread of rumors. Until recently, the lack of direct telecommunication between Cuba and the US was one factor. Other players were the large populations of exiles who had lost property in the revolution and militants who participated in the Bay of Pigs invasion (you didn't think those radicalized Cubans just disappeared after the invasion took place, do you?), all of whom had a personal interest in making conditions on the island sound as bad as possible.
Yes, the vast majority of Cubans are quite poor, unemployed, and hoping to find a way to leave the country. On the other hand, Americans vastly overstate the degree that ordinary citizens have been indoctrinated and worship Castro. The Castro brothers are corrupt, selfish imbeciles, and everyone knows it -- not just in Miami, but also in Cuba. The typical citizen who shows up at a Communist rally is there because it was required by their employer (e.g. the government), not because they actually believe in that crap.
When it comes to understanding the true situation in contemporaneity Cuba, being from Miami is probably more of a liability than an asset. On the other hand, President Obama has recently liberalized travel regulations, which would allow you to legally travel to Cuba and visit your relatives with no paperwork whatsoever. In the hacker spirit of free inquiry, why not go down there and see things for yourself? ;-)
You'll probably come back less impressed with the Castros than ever, but more impressed by the ability of the populace to see the situation for what it really is.
Sponsored by Volvo and Ikea...we feed the world one meatball at a time.
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
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks