Video showing a neighborhood LAN in Cuba

I've written posts about the wired and wireless neighborhood local area networks that have sprung up around Cuba. They are used for file exchange, game playing and discussion -- but no political discussion.

I came a across a Voice of America video with interviews of a couple of the users (perhaps system administrators -- they did not say). Here are a couple of stills from the video:

Building junction point

Cables run across roof tops and between buildings

Does anyone recognize this switch?

Everybody knows that we are being watched ...

The video reminded me of the way people in rural India used to share cable TV:

It also reminded me of Cuba's necessity-driven hacker/maker culture:

http://www.rikimbili.com/

Computer programmer is one of the jobs the Cuban government has designated as eligible for self-employment -- let's hope for innovation from these hackers and I hope ETECSA is hiring them for their networking skills.

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Also see:
http://laredcubana.blogspot.com/2014/08/a-report-of-cabled-local-area-networks.html

Instructions/tutorial for connecting to an ETECSA WiFi hot spot

Might the style of this help page say something about Cuba's improvising, do-it-yourself culture?

Instructions for connecting to an ETECSA hotpsot are posted in (Google Translate) English here and in the original Spanish here. The instructions are clear and they don't simply say what to do -- they teach a new user a little about the Internet. For example, they explain what DHCP and cookies are as well as showing how to enable them.

The tutorial also points out that your position and distance from the access point will affect signal strength and promises that the next tutorial will include plans for home-made antennae.

The instructions say all users will be able to download at a rate of 1mb/s regardless of the number sharing the access point. I imagine that that implies only a fixed number of users are able to connect at the same time and they only allow people with relatively strong signals to connect. (Can any reader verify that claim)?

Finally, they show how a user can check his/her download speed using Wget:

While not a computer science textbook, this user guide goes beyond rote "click this then click that" instructions -- it attempts to teach a little. The difference may be subtle, but people who have some understanding of the technology they are using will be more self-sufficient and less alienated. This is one tenuous example, but might the style of this help page say something about Cuba's improvising, do-it-yourself culture?

Does Cuba trust the US (and Google)?

Will mistrust stop Google and other US Internet companies in Cuba?

Trust?

I've written posts speculating on what Google might do in Cuba and on the possibility of their providing Internet access, but have received consistent "no comment" from Google, so a recent Havana Times report that Cuba had turned down an offer of WiFi connectivity from Google caught my eye.

The Havana Times post was based on an interview of the second secretary of the Cuban Communist Party, Jose Ramon Machado Ventura, but he does not mention Google or an offer of connectivity from them in the interview. He speaks instead of the intent of imperialists to use the Internet as a way to destroy the Revolution.

That has been the party line for years. Left trolls say the fear is realistic, citing the Helms-Burton Act, which has been used to justify various covert Internet initiatives to assist "the Cuban people in regaining their freedom." Right trolls answer that the Cuban government is only interested in enriching the Castros and their friends.

I've no idea what Google has offered Cuba, but it seems that trust is central to this discussion -- does the Cuban government trust Google or see them as a tool of the US government?

Google's advances toward Cuba have been made by their in-house "think/do tank" Google Ideas, which "builds products to support free expression and access to information for people who need it most — those facing violence and harassment."

Google Ideas is headed by Jared Cohen who, before coming to Google, was a member of the Secretary of State's Policy Planning Staff and served as an advisor to Condoleezza Rice and later Hillary Clinton. A couple years ago, Julian Assange of Wikileaks published documentation of Cohen's activity, branding him "Google’s director of regime change." A Cuban pro-government blog publicized Assange's work saying Google was doing what the CIA and NSA could not and channeling the State Department in Silicon Valley.

(Note the irony of the Cuban government pointing to documents uncovered by Wikileaks)!

Will mistrust stop Google and other US Internet companies in Cuba? Has the mistrust begun to thaw? Diplomatic relations are resuming and Raúl Castro, who opposed the Internet at its beginning, says Cuba and the United States are entering a new era.

Mr. Machado's remarks suggest that we may have to wait till regime change occurs (without Google's help) in 2018.

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Update 7/17/2015

President Obama has stated that "On Cuba, we are not in the business of regime change."

In spite of that, Gustavo Machin, deputy director for U.S. affairs in the Cuban Foreign Ministry, told reporters that he saw no evidence of practical change, citing the multimillion-dollar 2016 US budged request for Cuban democracy programs.

Tracey Eaton has analyzed the State Department request for Cuba funds for the 2016 fiscal year in a thorough blog post with links to the actual budget appendices. For example, he highlighted the following $20 million request for Cuba:

Regardless of one's opinion of the stated goals and the innefectiveness of such programs, the government of Cuba sees democracy promotion programs as regime change efforts. I don't know whether their expressed fear of such projects is genuine or propaganda, but either way, they undermine trust in US Internet companies.

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Update 7/27/2015

In a recent blog post, Circles Robinson askes whether the Cuban people (as oppossed to the government) trust the United States, condluding that "In asking around for opinions we found that in general there appears to be little mistrust of ulterior motives and most people are happy with the change. Likewise Obama seems quite popular."

This is of course annecdotal and probably limited to Havana, but it does not seem unreasonable.

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Update 3/25/2016

The Wall Street Journal has published an article surveying the collaboration between the Obama administration and Google on efforts to improve Cuban Internet access.

Cuban international traffic shifts from satellite to the ALBA-1 undersea cable

Doug Madory, Director of Internet Analysis at Dyn Research, sent me a note on Cuba's international traffic. As you see here, on July 1, nearly all satellite traffic (blue and green) was re-routed to the ALBA-1 undersea cable:

As a result, median latency has stabilized at around 210 milliseconds:

This is good news for Cubans who have Internet access at work, school or ETECSA hotspots and navigation rooms.

There must be relatively fast terrestrial connectivity to the cable landing point at Siboney Beach. Does anyone have any information about the nature of that connectivity? Huawei is installing home DSL and WiFi -- have they also installed an inter-province backbone? Could there have been an unannounced deal with medium-earth orbit satellite provider O3b Networks?

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Update 7/20/2015

Huawei may be installing home DSL and WiFi hotspots in Cuba, but Doug Madory has discovererd at least one piece of Cisco equipment -- a 2800 router at the University of Havana. (I'd be curious to know how they obtained it.)

I am not familiar with the Cisco 2800, so I Googled it to get the specs. I was saddened to see that it is old equipment, near the end of its support life -- the end date for software maintenance has already passed and hardware support will end soon.