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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.
Don't conflate Cronyism with Capitalism...Cronyism can (and does) exist in virtually all feasible economic models. You are, indirectly but fundamentally, describing Capitalism as the solution to Cronyism, but calling them the same thing. They are not.
As for the telecom issue, there are two key issues for the Cubans. The first is that there is very limited bandwidth for Internet access. Cuba just doesn't have enough high-sped satellite or undersea connections to allow video streaming and other high-bandwidth uses. Instead, someone will burn DVDs with movies and other content, then share them with others. It's like the old sneaker-net. So ETECSA (or its successor) will have to address the bandwidth issue before Cuba can have better Internet access. The proposal for the cable to Florida seems like a good start.
The second issue is limited public access to the Internet. If you are at the UCI (Computer science university), it's easy to get on the Internet from their machines, which run Nova, a UCI-developed Linux distro. Home computers with network access are extremely rare, so most people wanting to get onto the Internet must go to an ETECSA-run center and pay for access. The rate is about $2 US/hour, payable only in "hard" currency CUCs, extremely high in a country where average monthly salary is about $25. Overall, the estimate is that about 3% of the Cuban population is on the Internet, mostly through ETESCA's nauta.cu portal.The situation isn't any better with mobile phones, where ETECSA hasn't yet reached 3G speeds and there are no data plans. More info on the ETECSA site (in Spanish).
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.
Uhmm, Cuba was only isolated by the United States for the last 6 decades. Other countries have been doing business with them for a very long time.
Back in 2006 I was sent to Guantanamo Bay for a week-long contract. As I was walking into the Navy Exchange to grab some beer, my blackberry rang, I picked it up and answered, and everyone around me looked at me like I was from Mars. It dawned on me at that point that I probably had the only working cell phone on base, since as a Canadian (with a Canadian service contract), my phone had no trouble roaming onto the Cuban cell network.
Yeah, it was only GPRS, but for text email on a Blackberry it was still better than two rocks to bang together.
...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...