The Telecommunications Ball Is Now In Cuba's Court

lpress writes: The FCC has dropped Cuba from its exclusion list (PDF), so there are now no restrictions on U.S. telecom company dealings with ETECSA, the Cuban government telecommunication monopoly, or any other Cuban organization. Last week the U.S. sent its second high-level telecommunication delegation to Cuba. The delegates were FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler and other government officials plus representatives of Cisco, Comcast, and Ericsson. Some of the news: there are at least 6 proposals for an undersea cable between Havana and Florida; Cisco has proposed a Network Academy at Cuba's leading computer science university (Chinese infrastructure dominates today); 4G mobile connectivity was discussed and Google was conspicuously absent. The time for Cuba to act is now — while President Obama is still in office.

Comments

Here we go again ...

[gstoddart]

So, US companies are already looking to carve up Cuba for their own interests, and what happens to the Cuban people be damned.

Hey, I know, stop meddling and let them decide what the hell they want.

America suddenly shoving all this stuff into Cuba isn't necessarily doing anything good for Cubans in the long-run.

You can't go from 6 decades of isolation to thinking US style Capitalism isn't going to fuck up the place if you try to do it overnight.

This is the same kind of colonialism which got them into the mess they were in when the revolution happened in the first place.

You want to improve relations? Close Guantanamo, and stop pretending a Constitutional amendment jammed in against their will has any validity ... otherwise you're still treating them like a colony instead of a separate country.