Cuba Connecting Universities With Fiber

lpress writes: Two Cuban universities have fiber links and fiber connections will be available to all Cuban universities in January 2016. One of the currently connected universities is in the west, near Havana (satellite ground station) and one in the east, near the undersea cable landing. Cuba will use Chinese equipment for DSL to the home and Wifi access points.

Comments

Back Door

[pubwvj]

Is this the same Chinese country that is building back doors into networking and computer equipment so they can later take it over as described in a previous article? Seems everyone's hip to this fun game and playing it out.

Re:Back Door

[ArmoredDragon]

That, and the fact that they're deploying long ago obsoleted last mile technology (DSL), I doubt their infrastructure will be any kind of marvel. One would think that an all new deployment would be at least kind of modern.

Re:Back Door

[Anonymous Coward]

Reason for DSL is two-fold.

1. Cuba deployment needs to be CHEAP
2. See #1

Cuba doesn't have foreign cash to burn on Internet. They are probably using Chinese gear simply because they got good deal. And you know, it's kind of difficult to buy things from US if US still has their embargo on.

Re:Back Door

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this the same Chinese country...?

No, this is a Scottish Chinese country hidden away in the hills of Bavaria.

Re:Back Door

[DigiShaman]

I'm guessing equipment purchased on the used market. Cuba's still pretty poor right now. Thanks to Castro and his little shit-fit revolution, he drove that nation into the ground via COMMUNISM! And no, Cuba's survival didn't depend on trading with America; or the lack of in this case. The financial wounds were self-inflicted by Cuba for Cuba. It truly is a sad story and need not have happened.

Re:Back Door

[AK Marc]

You mean, thanks to the USA embargo, where force and threat of force to keep the smaller nation down harmed the smaller nation, and stunted its growth?

Re:Back Door

[AK Marc]

Cuba would rather have Chinese backdoors than the US/French/Israeli backdoors.

Re:Back Door

[ArmoredDragon]

What would the US embargo have done that the Iron Curtain wouldn't have already done anyways?

Re:Back Door

[Anonymous Coward]

Cuba is using Chinese gear because after the collapse of the Soviet Union, whom were sending a $20 Billion check every year, that cash went to zero, sending the
cuban economy into a tailspin. The 90's were tough on Cuba, but they eventually found new trading partners. When I was there five years ago, instead of Soviet-era Lada's there were new and quite nice Chinese cars and motorcycles. I went from the airport to my hotel in a brand new Chinese made bus, and it was nicer than any bus I've seen in North America. The Cubans are buying Chinese data gear because they while the embargo prevented US goods, and the Russians gone, the Chinese have stepped in and Chinese goods are everywhere.

Re: Back Door

[Anonymous Coward]

That's called single point of failure

Re:Back Door

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a very persistent rumour.

But unlike equipment from the US, no equipment has been caught in the act.

Re:Back Door

[citizenr]

Is this the same Chinese country that is building back doors into networking and computer equipment so they can later

You mean Cisco and US? No I dont think its this one.

Re:Back Door

[AK Marc]

It may have only resulted in a nicer palace for Castro, but the embargo on Cuban tobacco helped make the country poor. We'll never know what they would have done with the money. The evil of the US trumped the evil of Castro.

Re:Back Door

[lkcl]

Is this the same Chinese country that is building back doors into networking and computer equipment so they can later take it over as described in a previous article?

no because they forgot to ship it via the USA to have the backdoors installed.

Re:Back Door

[Feral Nerd]

I'm guessing equipment purchased on the used market. Cuba's still pretty poor right now. Thanks to Castro and his little shit-fit revolution, he drove that nation into the ground via COMMUNISM! And no, Cuba's survival didn't depend on trading with America; or the lack of in this case. The financial wounds were self-inflicted by Cuba for Cuba. It truly is a sad story and need not have happened.

You are trolling. Take the deeply held beliefs of the GOP+Tea Party and shout them from the roof top in a relatively liberal heavy crowd like slashdot and watch the sparks fly. At least it's a clever troll I'll give you that so I'll bite. Can some GOP voting admirer of the Cuba embargo please tell me what is the purpose of maintaining it 30 years after the end of the cold war? Do yoy really think the Cubans yearn to have the Batista elite that fled to Miami back? Rest assured that most of them don't. I've been there and my impression was that Cubans may want a better life but they don't want their island to bcome America's whorehouse again. You can try to tell me the Castros are a cruel dictatorship that killed a bunch of people and you'd me right. But then so are some of the USA's most trusted friends aroud the world who have regularly been recieved in the White House for decades with open arms by Democrat and Republican presidents alike. The Cuba embargo is a stupid anachronism, all it does in make an international laughing stock out of GOP senators and leaders who block the lifting of the Cuba embargo. This is especially true since at the same time these politicians are maintaining the embargo they are whoring for favors with Saudi oil princes who are functionaries in an athoritarian theocracy and some of whom financed the Iraq insurgency and are now bankrolling ISIL.

Re:Back Door

[Anonymous Coward]

You weren't there. That "shitfit" was kicking out Batista, a murderous, corrupt Mafia collaborating drug and gambling and crime cartel with rightwing death squads, right on the US doorstep. Great place to go for richer US tourists to spend money and buy prostitutes and drugs, pretty good place if you were rich and friendly with the government, bad, bad place to be poor. It was "trickle down economics" at its worst.

Castro refused to cooperate with the mafia, or with US cold war imperial policy, and refused to return the property and factories his government nationalized. Then the US tried to invade the country, and failed miserably.So that little "shitfit revolution" played the Russians off against the USA, successfully, for over *30 years* and kept their economy afloat and played political judo with the Western world.

Now? They're still surviving and making do. They're quite poor, mainly because the first round of Cuban expatriates in Miami have blocked every reconciliation attempt since the 1960's, and so has the US sugar and tobacco industries, which benefit profoundly from the lack of competition.

Re:Back Door

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice troll. Mod -1 though

Re:Back Door

[DigiShaman]

Oh bullshit!. They had the ENTIRE SOUTH AMERICA to trade with! But assuming for a moment you're correct (which you're not) let this be a lesson not to be a neighbor and side with an evil regime such as the USSR.

Re:Back Door

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this the same Chinese country...?

No, this is a Scottish Chinese country hidden away in the hills of Bavaria.

No, this is an American Chinese country that exists in a series of connected tunnels under the streets of New York, built by expats who arrived as refugees of the Second Opium war and excavated the complex to avoid getting horse manure on their shoes. Its only public entrance was a steel door built into the side of the Atlantic Avenue Steam Locomotive Tunnel that was sealed in 1861, but there exist numerous access points in landmark buildings.

Re:Back Door

[DigiShaman]

"I am a Marxist-Leninist, and I will be a Marxist-Leninist until the last days of my life" - Fidel Castro (Dec 2, 1961)

I propose the immediate launching of a nuclear strike on the United States. The Cuban people are prepared to sacrifice themselves for the cause of the destruction of imperialism and the victory of world revolution. - Fidel Castro (Oct, 23, 1992, as quoted in NY Times)

Forbes estimates Castro has a net worth between 550 million and 900 million dollars.

So yeah, keep wearing that Che Guevara T-Shirt there buddy.

Re:Back Door

[RabidReindeer]

Oh bullshit!. They had the ENTIRE SOUTH AMERICA to trade with!

Which itself has spent much of that interval being about as economically advanced as Cuba itself is.

I still contend that the ultimate destruction of the Castro regime won't occur until Americans are free to come in and corrupt them again.

Re:Back Door

[CrimsonAvenger]

You mean, thanks to the USA embargo, where force and threat of force to keep the smaller nation down harmed the smaller nation, and stunted its growth?

What, you somehow believe that the USA is the ONLY country that could possibly have traded with Cuba over the last half century? Let me give you a hint: everyone in the world except the USA could still trade with Cuba.

Yes, they could still sell their tobacco. And run their resort hotels and casinos. And their 14-year-old hookers....

Re:Back Door

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps you're too stupid to know about the dictatorship which existed in Cuba before Castro, you know, the one the Americans liked because it gave them everything they wanted and left the Cubans to starve.

Perhaps you're unaware of the Platt Amendment to the Cuban Constitution in which the US unilaterally gave themselves the right to Guantanamo.

Perhaps you've convinced yourself the half version of history you have heard is true.

Perhaps you should read something about the fucking history of Cuba and how they got where they are before you keep talking about something you clearly don't fucking understand.

Because you're full of shit.

Once again, Americans are too stupid to understand history, and conveniently forget the dictators they have supported over the years because they're friendly to US interests.

Re:Back Door

[Anonymous Coward]

The source of that second quote is the C.I.A. (releasing a telegram they supposedly intercepted between Castro and Yuri Andropov).

NEVER trust anything coming from the C.I.A. regarding Castro. It's 99.99% propaganda and lies. Keep in mind that this is the same C.I.A. that tried to kill Castro repeatedly (and failed), allied itself with anti-Castro scumbag criminal Batista cronies for decades (and still does), funded Cuban terrorists, blew up civilian airliners, and engaged in MANY MANY other vile criminal and evil activities so awful that most of their files will probably remain classified for the next hundred years.

Re:Back Door

[Anonymous Coward]

Here here,

People selectively forget or selectively never know this... Cuba has been run by malfeasant leaders much like the US has for decades, only Cuba has no corporate oligarchy to fall back on...

Re:Back Door

[Anonymous Coward]

an evil regime such as the USSR

If you think the Soviets are bad, you should have seen some of the EVIL VILE SHIT the U.S. has done to Cuba.

Land of the free, home of the brave indeed.

Re:Back Door

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean, the entire American continent (with the honorable exceptions of Mexico and Canada) who broke diplomatic relations with Cuba and expelled it from the OAS in 1962?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_relations_with_the_Organization_of_American_States

If you are going to spout ignorant nonsense, at lease have the decency of say it is your own opinion and not facts.

Re:Back Door

[Anonymous Coward]

Lol, ignoramus galore.

The US not only don't trade with Cuba, they forbid any subsidiary of US companies from exporting to Cuba and any company willing to do business with Cuba will face problems operating in the US. And you can guess how many pick principles over access to the US market. Not to mention that they routinely give multibillion dollar fines to banks dealing with Cuba and block Cuban access to most international credit sources.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helms–Burton_Act

Re:Back Door

[Anonymous Coward]

It may have only resulted in a nicer palace for Castro, but the embargo on Cuban tobacco helped make the country poor. We'll never know what they would have done with the money. The evil of the US trumped the evil of Castro.

Why is it evil for the US to refuse to economically aid the evil of Castro? Why is refusing to help evil a greater evil? I'd think even tacitly supporting evil would be the greater evil.

Didn't think your statement that far through, now did you?

Re:Back Door

[Anonymous Coward]

... the Chinese have stepped in and Chinese goods are everywhere.

So Cubans shop at Wal-Mart too?

Re:Back Door

[I'm New Around Here]

Despite all that, once Castro came to power, he used the US embargo as an eternal excuse to keep the country just as poor as it was beforehand.

I'll expand on what Digi pointed out - the entire world can trade with Cuba, except one country, and Cuba can't figure out how to have a good economy. It isn't the embargo one one single country that is hurting them, as even Raúl Castro admitted a few years ago.

Re:Back Door

[ultranova]

Can some GOP voting admirer of the Cuba embargo please tell me what is the purpose of maintaining it 30 years after the end of the cold war? Do yoy really think the Cubans yearn to have the Batista elite that fled to Miami back?

The obvious answer is: to get the vote of that Batista elite.

A deeper reason is likely that, no matter what it cost it, Cuba is a small country that succesfully defied the USA and went its own way. Empires can be unbelievably petty sometimes. And the ideologies riding them have all the tender neighbourly love of religious fanaticism without even the hypothetical possibility of judgement to curb the worst excesses. Those ideologies need to see any dissenters brought low to secure themselves, to kill off even the very idea that there might be a workable alternative. Because as soon as there is, their offers are no longer ones you can't refuse. Hence the continued attempts to demonize Communism, despite it being unlikely any idea could had succeeded any better in the broken ruins of Tsarist Russia. Burger-flippers are already talking about a living wage; imagine if they cast off the idea that they're less valuable than Donald Trump or Darl McBride and started demanding an actual fair share rather than beg for a bit more table scraps.

The GOP is heavily invested in both US national pride and state religion (Capitalism), and Cuba pissed on both.

Re:Back Door

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, burger flippers *are* less valuable than the Donald. I should know, I use to be one. And a farm worker, construction worker, printing press operator, fruit picker, and stock clerk. None of those jobs is remotely as productive as what I do now, therefore the wages are quite a bit lower. Wages are set by productivity, period, notwithstanding the hand wringing of the do-gooders. BTW, your characterization of capitalism as the state religion of the US is laughable. We have not practiced capitalism in the US in a generation. Call it what it is, fascism. The means of production may still be privately owned, but government mandates control massive swaths of production.

Re:Back Door

[ArmoredDragon]

That doesn't make sense at all, because technologically Cuba is presently residing in the early 1960s, which is about when its ties with the US ended. Also Cuba didn't begin to see famine until after that point as well.

They'll have plenty of fiber

[Anonymous Coward]

But no data will be allowed onto it.

Re:They'll have plenty of fiber

[MacTO]

Did you drink a bit too much of the kool-aid? Cuba may not be a free nation, yet there are far worse nations that still allow access to the Internet. Monitored and censored, sure. Yet that hardly means that they don't allow data onto the "fibre". They still want data that serves the interest of the state. For the most part, they don't care about data that isn't a threat to the state.

Good luck!

[Anonymous Coward]

Good luck getting IP addresses, Cuba!

Re:Good luck!

[MrDoh!]

How many will they need? can they just use 192.168.x.x for most stuff and have a giant NAT to route/censor stuff through? Why would they want anyone outside connecting up to servers inside the country? or... Once Starbucks sets up, they'll hop onto their wifi and keep sharing that out.

How about Cisco and NSA backdoor?

[Taco Cowboy]

The link - http://www.infoworld.com/artic...

Re:How about Cisco and NSA backdoor?

[Anonymous Coward]

The link - http://www.infoworld.com/artic...

If you really prefer a Chinese boot on your neck to the USAians boot on your neck, I suggest you move to China and find out what the place is really like.

Re:How about Cisco and NSA backdoor?

[YesIAmAScript]

That's not a Cisco backdoor.

That's a NSA backdoor the NSA installed by intercepting the units and installing their own hardware.

This is significantly different than a backdoor from the manufacturer which would be in all devices. That is if indeed that does exist in Huawei equipment. The Western media reports so breathlessly on Chinese companies that it's hard to tell what has basis in fact and what is just rumor.

Re: How about Cisco and NSA backdoor?

[Anonymous Coward]

What's this you are worse than me argument?

Re:How about Cisco and NSA backdoor?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hm, would you rather be Tibetan or Iraqi? Tough call.

Not really unique

[SeaFox]

Cuba will use Chinese equipment for DSL to the home and Wifi access points.

I think we can all say that our DSL and wifi equipment is Chinese in origin. ;)

Only one thing to say

[Anonymous Coward]

INVASION PLAN IS GO!

Let the socialist apologies commence

[Anonymous Coward]

1) In Europe, we have eleventy megabit Internet.
2) In Cuba, everyone is equal.
3) Obama is the best.
4) We should be more like China.
5) Healthcare is a right.
6) Why can't the US have high speed rail?

Awesome!

[Hognoxious]

Now all they need is a computer!

Is Cuban society ready to deal with burnout?

[Anonymous Coward]

With the Internet about to become so readily available in Cuba so quickly and after so long, I don't doubt at all that many Cubans will jump at the opportunity to use it as soon as they can.

Given Cuba's proximity to the United States, and its low labor costs but comparatively high education levels, it may become a preferred destination for software development outsourcing.

But are Cubans ready for this? Will these new Cuban computer programmers be able to deal with burnout?

Today I read about an awful tragedy affecting a programmer. This poor soul wrote

I'm currently in a state where I litterally just can't write code. At all. I get dizzy, headaches, I've even cried a few times just at the sight of my text editor.

and

A little over a month ago, only 3 years into the project, I blew up. One day I woke up, sat in front of my computer and broke up in tears. Called the boss to tell him I couldn't work for a few days. To this day I still can't code. I'm not even sure I will ever be able to code again either. For now I'm looking at applying for Walmart for an undetermined amount of time.

If something as awful as that can happen to programmers in other nations, it could happen in Cuba, too. How will they prepare for this?

They may install twisted pair runs?

[YesIAmAScript]

Please don't install 2M new twisted pair runs. This is an awful idea. Fiber is cheap. Coax is pretty cheap. And both are far faster and more flexible than twisted pair.

What twisted pair is really good for (outside of the house) wireless is good at too. So install something better if you really want to upgrade versus just running 4G service.

Do not install new DSL wires. It'd be a tragedy.

Re:They may install twisted pair runs?

[jratcliffe]

Agreed. It would be crazy at this stage to be pulling new twisted pair copper. I get why you'd want to use DSL and leverage the twisted pair that's there (cheap solution), but not why you'd want to add new copper lines.

... and you think the Cubans don't know?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Cubans are not as stupid as you think

They knew that no matter if they use the Chinese device or the one from Cisco all of them are going to have extra 'bugging feature' and the fact that they have chosen the Chinese device over Cisco illustrate their willingness to be bugged by the Chinese and not by NSA

Go with the Chinese back-doors

[Anonymous Coward]

they are a whole lot less dangerous to you than the American ones. If there are any Chinese back-doors at all - there is only propaganda and unsubstantiated accusations, while for the U.S there are loads, and loads, and yet more loads of proof of foul play.

Re:Go with the Chinese back-doors

[Anonymous Coward]

They had to go Chinese. All U.S. equipment sent to Cuba is so loaded up with CIA/NSA backdoors and viruses that it doesn't even work.

What does "connecting" mean?

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Does it mean what it means to normal sane people? Or it means what the Verizon lawyers say it means?

Sorry,

[Anonymous Coward]

Commiecast is already taken.

How long till the ssh attacks start coming...

[CSG_SurferDude]

So how long until http://longtail.it.marist.edu/ starts seeing and categorizing SSH Brute Force attacks from Cuba?