Havana can have 5G before Miami

(Click here for a Spanish translation of this post).

Havana needs 5G more than Miami does.

Compared to Miami, Havana is an Internet desert, but Havana may have 5G wireless connectivity before Miami. 5G architecture, US politics and policy, and the 5G timetable favor Havana. Let's start with 5G architecture.

Architecutre

Small cells (source)

5G will require many "small cells" because it uses high-frequency radio signals that don't travel as far as 4G signals and are more easily blocked by obstructions like trees and buildings. For example, there are about 154,000 cell towers in the US today and the CTIA, an industry association, estimates that there will be 800,000 small cells by 2026.

In Miami, small cell radios will be installed by professional employees of and contractors to the large mobile phone companies. Havana has only one telecommunication company, ETECSA, but it is home to SNET, the world's largest community network that is not connected to the Internet. Today, SNET is illegal but tolerated, and if ETECSA were willing to legitimize and collaborate with SNET, SNET members could play a role in siting and installing small cells. SNET's legal status is currently being reconsidered and by the time Havana is ready to deploy 5G, SNET could play a major cost and time-saving role. (Note that Cuba's new constitution de-centralizes executive governance by reducing provincial government and strengthening municipal government, possibly increasing the likelihood of local control of Internet infrastructure).

Havana's population is about 4.5 times that of Miami, but the population density is about one-tenth of Miami's. Low population density lends itself to citizen installation -- antennas will be relatively easy to site and install. Furthermore, obtaining permission to install them in Havana will be easier than Miami. Wire-line Internet service providers have already installed broadband infrastructure throughout Miami and, since 5G will offer a fixed-broadband alternative, the incumbents will resist it politically. On the other hand, 5G will fill a near-vacuum in Havana -- Havana needs 5G more than Miami does.

Time

Average 4G download speed, Mbps (source)

Wireless standards are complex and evolve over time. The Third Generation Partnership Project was established in 1998 to define 3G mobile standards and is now defining 5G standards. Thousands of people from equipment manufacturers, telecommunication companies, national and international standards organizations, and professional societies are involved in the process and the technology and standards evolve over time. (For example, between February of 2016 and January 2019, average 4G download speed doubled in the US).

While we will see an ad proclaiming that Miami "has 5G" this year or next, the capability and applications will be marginally improved over 4G and only available in limited parts of the city. Perhaps five years from now 5G standards and equipment that can support novel applications will become available.

In the interim, neither city will see much 5G impact, but it will give Havana time to continue with their current program of stopgap measures like 3G mobile access. If the price of 3G is significantly reduced, Cuba will develop trained, demanding Internet users and app developers who are ready to embrace 5G once it is available.

Stopgap measures like 3G, public WiFi, and home DSL will not close the fiber gap between Miami and Havana, but in five years improved terrestrial wireless and low and medium-earth orbit (LEO and MEO) satellite connectivity will be available for 5G backhaul. Cuba is already a customer of MEO Internet-service provider O3b and in five years O3b will have significantly improved capacity and performance. Additionally, LEO providers SpaceX, OneWeb and China's Hongyun Project all plan to be offering service over Cuba in five years. SpaceX is based in the US and OneWeb in Great Britain, so Hongyun may have the inside track here, although they will have less capacity than their competitors.

Politics and policy

source

Trump's trade war with China favors Havana over Miami. As FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel points out: "levying new tariffs on everything from semiconductors to modems to routers is not going to make it any easier to deploy 5G wireless service. In fact, it will make it much more expensive."

His ban against Huawei further advantages Havana since Huawei is the world's leading producer of telecommunication equipment for service providers with a comfortable lead over their 5G competitors Nokia and Ericsson. They are also the number 2, in unit sales, and number 3, in revenue, smartphone manufacturer. If the ban persists, Miami will not have access to Huawei equipment.

By contrast, Huawei has supplied nearly all of Cuba's Internet infrastructure from its backbone to WiFi hotspots and home DSL and they are almost certain to be Cuba's 5G vendor. It is likely that China will contribute financially if they see Cuba as a strategic ally in their effort to extend the Digital Silk Road to Latin America and the Caribbean.

The US government was instrumental in funding the development of the Internet and could adopt positive 5G policies like investing in R&D or providing incentives to participate in the global 5G standards process, but Trump eschews global cooperation and Chinese companies are playing a leading role in the definition of 5G standards, which will solidify Huawei's leadership. Chinese telephone companies with 1.58 billion mobile phone subscriptions, will also influence standards as large 5G equipment customers.

Rather than seeing 5G as a cooperative global effort, Trump sees it as a competitive race and his 5G policy focuses on spectrum allocation (which is going poorly) and a call for State and local governments to improve "access to land, infrastructure, and property that will support new wireless networks, including rural America." [sic] That call sounds like it was drafted by a lobbyist for the incumbent mobile telcos or perhaps an ex-Associate General Counsel at Verizon like FCC Chairman Ajit Pai and it will meet resistance. (China has no such conflict).

I used the word "can" instead of "will" in the title of this post because the outcome depends upon the will of the Cuban government and ETECSA.

Chinese technology companies in Cuba -- what are they doing?

Jennifer Hernandez of the Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies at the University of Miami has posted a note on her research on Chinese Technology Companies in Cuba.

She notes that "through bilateral trade agreements, China has been expanding its sphere of influence," and looks at the activities of two large Chinese telecommunication equipment companies, Huawei and ZTE. Much of her emphasis is on surveillance and she concludes that "China’s transfer of technology to Cuba does not necessarily benefit Cubans. Instead China seems to be equipping the island’s information technology infrastructure with systems that can potentially spy on Cubans."

Internet surveilance is pretty well taken for granted in Cuba and China, and it is deplorable, but I wonder about the up side. Are Huawei, ZTE and other Chinese companies also building Internet infrastructure in Cuba?

China was instrumental in installing the ALBA-1 undersea cable between Cuba and Venezuela, but what about infrastructure on the Island? We have spoken earlier of the mismatch between the speed of the undersea cable and the obsolete domestic Internet infrastructure -- the cable is strong link in a weak chain.

That fact had to be understood before work began on the cable, but it went forward regardless. It may be wishful thinking, but I hope Cuba will use the resources and expertise of Huawei and ZTE to strengthen that weak chain by, say, building a Cuban backbone or working to connect key sectors like education and healthcare -- even if they keep an eye on the users.

What's up with the ALBA-1 cable? Time to follow the money.

MIC Minisiter Maimir Mesa
commenting on the ALBA-1 cable

Last week I received an email from Doug Madory of Renesys Corporation, the Internet monitoring company. Doug is the analyst who, last May, provided us with smoking-gun evidence that the ALBA-1 undersea cable was not carrying Internet traffic.

Doug says there has been "no change on connectivity in Cuba. Still all satellite." He promises to keep an eye on the situation and let us know if it changes.

He also provided a link to a post entitled "What Happened to the Cable? Cubans Discuss Internet Access" on Global Voices, a portal for blogs and citizen media.

The post links to a number of Cuban blogs with posts about the cable and notes that, after much interest and hype, the news has gone silent. Consider, for example, this post from the blog From Inside Cuba. The post chronicles the coverage of the cable in the blog Cubadebate starting in 2007 and suddenly stopping in 2011. It concludes with a long list of pointed questions.

This post is consistent with what we have observed earlier and the fact that Minisiter of Informatics and Communication Maimir Mesa said nothing about the cable in his recent report to Parliament.

On the surface it seems that $70 million was spent on a cable that was installed with no thought of how it would be used or what sort of domestic infrastructure would be needed to exploit it, and then, it was abandoned.

One has to ask what is going on. I am not a journalist, but, if I were, I would follow the money. Posts on Cuba Debate and BNAmericas (account required), say the $70 million came as loan from China to Venezuela.

Did the $70 million come from the Chinese taxpayer? If not, where did it come from? How much of it went to Alcatel Lucent for their work? How much to people in China, Cuba and Venezuela and who got it? It seems there may be invisible hands in socialist economies as well as capitalist.

Cuba needs a domestic upgrade to utilize the ALBA cable. Will China help?

Commemorating 50 years of Cuba-China relations

The Cuba-Venezuela undersea cable will soon be operational. In our report on the Cuban Internet, we discussed the cable and China's role in its financing and construction. We mentioned a report stating that the cable had been financed with a Chinese loan to Venezuela, and described the Chinese role in its design and installation.

When complete, the cable will increase the speed of Cuba's international connectivity dramatically, but, what of the physical and human infrastructure needed to capitalize on that increase? Cuba's domestic network and the people and organizations that operate it have been working with low-speed, high-latency international connectivity. They are, to a great extent, living in the dial-up access era.

To utilize the capacity of the new cable, they will have to upgrade equipment, organizations, and worker skills. If they do not, the cable will be of limited value -- a strong link in a weak chain.

The Ministry of Informatics and Communications (MIC) and others in Cuba must have plans and programs for upgrading the physical and organizational Internet infrastructure.

For example, we discussed Cuban computer science education in our report, with some focus on the relatively new University of Informatics Science (UCI). UCI places major emphasis on practical work along with education -- I expect (hope) that they are involved in both training for and implementing a strategic upgrade of the domestic network.

In January 2011, MIC was reorganized and later in the month Cuba purchased Telecom Italia's 27 percent share of ETECSA. These moves may indicate a strategic shift toward support of a new domestic network.

But, what of the funding? It was reported that it cost $706 million to buy Telecom Italia out. Those funds are no longer available for domestic network upgrades, but might China play a role in modernizing Cuba's domestic Internet?

Cuba was the first Latin American nation to establish diplomatic relations with China in 1960. At a fifty-year commemoration ceremony, the Chinese pledged to "provide assistance to Cuba to help its social and economic development."

Like the US before it, China has made many investments in developing nations, and they have already participated in the undersea cable project. China has extensive experience building Internet infrastructure at home and to a lesser extent in Africa and other parts of the world. Furthermore, Huawei, a Chinese company, has emerged as a major manufacturer and exporter of Internet equipment.

How will Cuba upgrade its physical and organizational infrastructure to take advantage of the new undersea cable and what will be China's role in developing the domestic Internet in Cuba? Is there a Cuban IT plan?

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My speculation on China should be qualified by the fact that according to a Wikileaked diplomatic memo Cuba-China trade volume fell with the current economic crisis and China is somewhat disillusioned with Cuban finance.

There has been speculation that Cuba is looking for a new foreign partner, perhaps to finance new domestic infrastructure.