ETECSA will sell -- and service -- Huawei phones.

ETECSA has agreed to sell and service Huawei phones. Since Cuban cell service is 2G, they will be used for voice calls and Internet access at WiFi hotspots and elsewhere. (I have heard that there is a little 3G coverage in Cuba -- is that the case)?

Javier Villariño, Huawei’s director of sales in Cuba, said the phones would “improve the voice quality and data services offered by ETECSA." Perhaps more important, he said Etecsa would be able to distribute spare parts and accessories, and train repair staff. That sounds like ETECSA will be competing with independent, self-employed phone repair people.

Since I am a customer (victim) of a mobile access oligopoly and a fixed access monopoly (Sprint and Time Warner Cable), that sounds ominous to me.

Photos of the phones are shown below -- does anyone recognize them or know their specs?

China has dominated the Cuban Internet infrastructure market in recent years and Chinese exports to Cuba are increasing in all sectors, reaching $1.33 billion in the first three quarters of this year, up by 82.4 percent. On the other hand, Cuban exports to China have dropped, due to a decrease in the production of nickel, which is the country's principal export. Over 40 Chinese companies participated in the 33rd Havana International Fair, which ends today.

Cuban infrastructure investment -- China won the first round

China won the first round, what about the future?

In December 2014, the administration announced that we were taking "historic steps to chart a new course in our relations with Cuba and to further engage and empower the Cuban people." The following month, the US International Trade Commission began a study of the economic effects of US restrictions on trade with and travel to Cuba. They held hearings on potential exports in several sectors and I testified on potential telecommunication exports.

In March, the US sent a high-level delegation to Cuba to discuss telecommunication and the Internet and no doubt Internet service and equipment companies began analyzing the potential Cuban market. Most visibly, Google visited several times and eventually made a concrete proposal for the installation of some sort of wireless infrastructure, but that offer was rejected, perhaps for lack of trust in the US Government and Google.

Google made several trips to Cuba, but their proposal was rejected.

This month the White House extended our policy, authorizing US companies to establish a business presence in Cuba and provide "certain" telecommunications and Internet-based services or do joint ventures or enter into licensing agreements to market such services.

To date, this effort has led just a few small Internet deals like Netflix offering Cubans accounts, Airbnb renting rooms or Verizon offering cell-phone roaming in Cuba.

Cuba has turned to China, not the US, for Internet connectivity and equipment and is committed to doing so in the short term future.

China played a major role in the financing and construction of the ALBA-1 undersea cable, which connects Cuba to Venezuela and Jamaica. It was reported that China lent Venezuela $70 million to finance the cable, which was installed by a joint venture made up of Alcatel-Lucent Shanghai Bell and Telecomunicaciones Gran Caribe (TGC) -- TGC is a joint venture between Telecom Venezuela (60%) and Cuban Transbit SA (40%), both state-owned companies.

The cable landed in Cuba in February 2011, but the first traffic was not transmitted until January 2013. Much of Cuba's international traffic continued to be routed over satellite links until July 2015, when nearly all of it had finally shifted to the cable. Cuba's international traffic continued to be routed over slow, expensive satellite links for over four years because the cable landing point is at the east end of the island and there was little domestic infrastructure to connect it to Havana and other locations.

The ALBA-1 cable traffic has shifted from satellite (blue) to cable.

At the time of the cable installation, we speculated that China might play a role in building the domestic infrastructure needed to reach it and it turns out that Cuba had awarded Huawei a contract to build a national fiber-optic network in the year 2000. Today there is a backbone network connecting the Cuban provinces to the cable landing point. The current load is light compared to expected future traffic from homes, schools, universities and public access locations, so Cuba must be planning a faster, more comprehensive backbone and I imagine Huawei is involved.

ETECSA backbone diagram, date/status unknown, source: Nearshore America

Huawei equipment was also used in the recent installation of 35 WiFi hotspots across the island. Since they claim the access points will support 50-100 simultaneous users at 1 Mb/s speed, these 35 locations must connect to the national backbone network. While 35 access points are a drop in the bucket, Cuba is committed to adding more. Counting WiFi, "navigation rooms," Youth Clubs and hotels, there are now 683 public access points in Cuba, all of which reach the backbone.

Huawei WiFi antennae

In addition to expanding public access and the backbone, they plan to make DSL connectivity available to 50% of Cuban homes by 2020. (Note that that is not to say 50% of Cuban homes will be online). Doing so will require new equipment in the telephone central offices serving those homes and Huawei will supply that equipment. Two other Chinese companies, ZTE and TP Link are providing DSL modems for network users. (ZTE has an office in Havana and may also be involved in the backbone network).

Home Internet: Huawei central office equipment and ZTE and TP Link modems

Cuba also has plans to connect all schools and make fiber connections to the backbone available to all universities. I don't know whose equipment will be used for those upgrades, but, if Huawei is the backbone vendor, I suspect that they would have the inside track on customer premises equipment (CPE). A recent market research report shows that Chinese CPE sales are growing rapidly, fueled by a large domestic market.

Lina Pedraza Rodríguez, Minister of Finance and Prices, said that Cuba is in
"very advanced" negotiations with Huawei, May 2015.

In spite of China's success in Cuba, all has not been perfect. As this Wikileaks memo from the US Interests Section in Havana shows, the Chinese have had some difficulty collecting Cuban debt. Cuba remains a tricky place to do business.

Finally, note that all of these sales are for equipment, not network operation. While Huawei has sold Cuba equipment, the backbone installation has been supervised by a Cuban engineer who has worked for Huawei since 2002 and Huawei does not seem to have an office in Cuba. Cuba bought Telecom Italia's share of ETECSA, Cuba's monopoly telecommunication company, in 2011 and remains independent. That may turn out to be a good or bad thing for the Cuban people, depending upon ETECSA's policy and goals.

It looks like China has won the first round. That's the bad news for US companies. The good news is that very little infrastructure has been sold so far and much of what has been sold and is planned for the near future is already obsolete by today's standards. That says there will be a much larger second round -- will the US be a player?

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Update 10/1/2015

A Cuban reader commented on Huawei's success in Cuba:

In early 2000 gradually they replaced all Cisco router by Huawei, including my office. probably today 95% of all routers in Cuba are Huawei, a "legacy" of Ramiro Valdez was minister, and the millions that Cuba spent in the "battle of ideas."

He also said that Huawei has had an office in the Miramar Trade Center in Havana for over ten years. (I could not find it using Google).

Note that Ramiro Valdés called the Internet "the wild stallion of the new technologies," which "could and should be controlled and used to serve peace and development" in spite of the fact that it construes one of the "mechanisms for global extermination."

If dealing with Huawei was politically motivated, the Internet infrastructure market may open in the future. (Some readers will claim that payoffs were involved, but I have no evidence one way or the other on that).

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Update 3/5/2016

The home page of the Mariel port web site features images of Chinese cranes, but China has supplied more than cranes. Doug Madory, Director of Internet Access at Dyn Research, sent me an email saying he had found evidence of Chinese software on the site -- an error message with Chinese characters.

I went to the site and, at first, could not reproduce the error message, but I have been able to subsequently-- it is due to slow load time. When the site begins to load, it displays three links as shown below, but the page is not fully loaded. Clicking on "Sobre TC Mariel" displays the error message with Chinese characters ("Data failed to load!" according to Google Translate), shown below.

Chinese error message on the Mariel site

Doug followed up with a snippet of JavaScript with Chinese comments, saying things like "Cookie's name," "Will be saved" and "Cookie format is a semicolon spaces." (It's kind of cool to see that Chinese programmers write comments just like we do).

Chinese comments in Mariel site code

It will not be easy for the US to compete against the Chinese in Cuba -- Huawei and others are well-established, formidable competitors. That is one of the hidden costs of the Cuban embargo.

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Update 6/3/2916

Is this a coincidence? The Chinese news agency, Xinhua, just posted a rosy puff-piece about Cuba's plan to "expand Internet access in public areas and private businesses." It is not a news report -- it rehashes things like their planning to deploy more public access via WiFi and Internet cafes and takes a shot at the US trade embargo.

A couple days later, the Wall Street Journal reported that "The U.S. Commerce Department has subpoenaed Huawei Technologies Co., demanding that the Chinese telecommunications giant submit all information on its export and re-export of technological goods to Iran, North Korea and other sanctioned nations."

Can the US really do much about Huawei in Cuba? I doubt that they are highly dependent upon components from US suppliers and, to the extent that they do use US components, wouldn't they find substitutes if blocked?

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Update 12/27/2016

China has been Cuba's most important source of Internet consumer and infrastructure equipment and now China's Haier Group will be manufacturing low-end laptops and tablets in China. Haier is a large, multinational manufacturer of home appliances and consumer electronics -- they are in 29 countries and recently acquired General Electric's appliance division. For now, they will be making low-end laptops and tablets in collaboration with GEDEME, a Cuban manufacturer, but, what are their plans for Cuba? Is this a strategic investment?

GEDEME factory -- four managers, one worker, no robots -- symbolic if not literal.

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Update 5/18/2017

David Crosswell points out that China has been active in other parts of the Cuban economy as have the Russians and Iranians and provides links to several examples in his comments on this post.

Cuba, given its proximity, is critical to our national security -- a lesson we learned during the Cuban missile crisis. Trump should think about "unvetted" Iranians 90 miles from Florida.

https://anewdomain.net/china-wins-first-round-cuban-internet-investment-analysis/

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Update 4/1/2025

It was just pointed out to me that a version of this post was cited in the recommendation against the connection of the ARCOS-1 cable, which I supported.

Speculation on the Cuban Internet backbone

Since the earliest days of the Internet, Cuba has stressed geographically distributed connectivity, unlike most developing nations, which focused on one or a few large cities. That policy is still in effect. There are plans to connect universities, schools and homes and there are already public WiFi hotspots and and Internet-access rooms in every province. (Of the original 118 public access rooms, only 12 were in Havana).

A backbone network covering the length of the island is necessary to achieve such geographically dispersed connectivity and, since essentially all of Cuba's international traffic is now routed over the undersea cable connection at the east end of the island, there must already be a backbone network connecting the provinces. The provision of 1 mbps international connectivity at the new WiFi hotspots is further evidence of a backbone.

I know nothing of the architecture or technology (fiber and wireless?) of today's backbone, but the load is very light compared to a future with planned traffic from homes, schools, universities and public access locations, so Cuba must be planning a high speed backbone.

We got a very hazy view of that plan in a Cuban market research study, which was just published by Nearshore America. The report includes diagrams of the three-phase backbone plan shown below:

These diagrams are attributed to ETECSA, but they have been substantially redrawn to protect the identity of the person who supplied them. While the legend on each slide shows 2 fixed and 9 reconfigurable multiplexers, I suspect that refers to the final phase. Similarly, I am guessing that "12 OLA" refers to optical wavelengths in each network link, but that is just a guess. The author of the Nearshore report was not told the time schedule for the phases.

I'd be curious to know a lot more, like who is designing and installing the backbone and who is supplying the equipment -- for example, are those Huawei multiplexers?

The one thing these images show us is that ETECSA is indeed planning a fiber backbone network.

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Uodate 8/20/2015

@yawnboy sent me a link to material released by Edward Snowden showing that the NSA was thinking of installing back doors in Huawei routers in 2010.

An NSA presentation included this slide:

The text note accompanying the slide reads in part:

Many of our targets communicate over Huawei produced products, we want to make sure that we know how to exploit these products - we also want to ensure that we retain access to these communication lines, etc.

I'm offering this in jest, but it would have been ironic if Cuba had installed Chinese routers with NSA "backdoors."

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Update 8/28/2015

Reader Ed Francis sent me a link to a 2005 post on Chinese companies in Cuba. The author visited the offices of several Chinese companies, including that of Huawei. The following is a Google Translate version of his observation:

Huawei to enter the Cuban market in 2000, when the company won the bid in an international tender Huawei Cuban government for the construction of a national fiber transmission network are conducted. Although the company is currently in Cuba only two market development officer and six engineers responsible for technical support, but Huawei's products have entered the all Cuban existing telecommunications.

Huawei's office, Interim Head of Cuban Mr. Humberto said Cuba telecom market competition is very fierce, before the market is mainly occupied by Alcatel, Ericsson and other large companies in Europe, I would like to win the market from their hands share of easier said than done. However, with a strong technical strength and highly competitive prices, Huawei has basically heard from a Cuban company became a pivotal role in the market. Cuba Telekom AG is the only company operating fixed telephone service, the total investment in 2004 to purchase 30% of Huawei's products.

It sounds like he is saying that Huawei won a bid for the construction of a fiber backbone in 2000. No details are given, but I wonder if that may be referring to the network pictured above.

The article also says Huawei has an office with two market development officers (salesmen?) and six engineers, headed by a Cuban, Mr. Humberto. (It is my understanding that Chinese infrastructure projects are typically run and staffed by Chinese, which would make this an exception).

I checked on the Huawei and Cuban Chamber of Commerce Web sites, and there is no listing for a Huawei office in Cuba today; however, ZTE does have an office in Havana. (ZTE sold ETECSA 5,000 home modems for the planned DSL rollout and may also be seeking to sell backbone equipment).

Subsequently, an anonymous Cuban writer told me that:

In early 2000 gradually they replaced all Cisco router by Huawei, including my office. probably today 95% of all routers in Cuba are Huawei, a "legacy" of Ramiro Valdez was minister, and the millions that Cuba spent in the "battle of ideas."

. He also said Huawei's office was located in the Miramar Trade Center).

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Update 8/31/2015

Ed Francis has continued his detective work. On LinkedIn, he found that Jorge Rivero Loo has, since 2008, supervised the implementation and technical support of the optical backbone network outlined above. The network uses Huawei equipment and Mr. Rivero has worked for them since 2002. Before that, he worked for ETECSA and studied at Jarcov University (in Russia?) and CUJAE.

Have US firms missed the boat?

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Update 9/8/2015

Ed Francis has turned up more evidence of Huawei equipment -- a Cubatel photo gallery from 2008. Here is one of the photos, along with its caption:

A second photo refers to speeds of 2 and 34 Mb/s:

This facility is referred to as a "node on the national fiber optic network," and, given the year and speeds, I suspect this equipment may have served a metropolitan area network -- perhaps in Havana?

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Update 9/21/2015

Jon Williams, @WilliamsJon, and Michael Weissenstein, @mweissenstein, demonstrated the existence of the high-speed backbone between Havana and the undersea cable landing when they discovered that extra bandwidth had been allocated to access points used by journalists during the Pope's visit:

64 Mb/s from a mobile connection

100 Mb/s from a wired PC

Cuba is using WiFi for short run portable connectivity

I've been in Scandinavia and Vietnam this year and have not bothered to get a SIM card for my phone -- WiFi was available wherever I went.

Let me start with a look at today's Cuban WiFi, then turn to the question of portable and mobile connectivity in the long run.

Nick Miroff has published a Washington Post article on the activity at one of the 35 new WiFi hotspots in Cuba. Here are a few observations from that and other articles reporting on the new hotspots:

• The users are young people.
• They are often communicating with family and friends outside of Cuba. My guess is that a lot of that communication is paid for by those outsiders.
• The content, like that of the weekly paquete, is apolitical.
• IMO seems to be a popular program for audio and video chat.
• People are using the hotspots a lot at night when it is cool.
• There are long lines for 2 CUC (a little less than $2) scratch-off cards that enable one to log on for one hour and Miroff says sidewalk entrepreneurs are hoarding and re-selling them for 3 CUC with impunity.
• Yoandy Sánchez has an even better idea -- send an SMS message that costs 2 CUC to an ETECSA phone number that responds with a 1-hour passcode. (A hidden cost of obsolete technology is that it "blinds" developers).
• Miroff also says people are using Connectify Hotspot to share access to a single connection, at reduced speed, for 1 CUC per hour.
• He also says ever-resourceful Cuban hackers are tapping into street lamp electrical wires to create charging stations.
• The hotspots are supposed to provide 1 mbps connectivity to all users who are logged in, but that is not always the case. Still, people are doing video chats and streaming lo-res video. (Miroff was able to watch ESPN highlights).
• Even at 2 CUC per hour, there is a lot of pent-up demand for Internet access. People are willing to wait to get online.
• Getting online at one of these hotspots is something of a party/social event.
• Cuba also has conventional Internet access rooms with PCs, but these WiFi spots allow people to bring their own devices so the cost to ETECSA is much less and they do not have to worry about equipment becoming obsolete.
• They are using Huawei WiFi equipment (and are also using Huawei gear for home DSL).
• Let's keep this WiFi rollout in perspective -- 35 oversubscribed hotspots for 11 million people is a drop in the bucket.

And, of course, I've got a few unanswered questions, like:

• What are they doing for backhaul at the 35 hotspots?
• How are they managing bandwidth to give each user 1 mbps?
• Are Huawei engineers building the network or is Huawei merely a vendor, with Cubans doing the engineering and installation? (I hope it is the latter).
• Are the talents of Cuba's homegrown WiFi connectivity experts being used?
• Are the Chinese financing the rollout and, if so, what are the terms?
• Is the Cuban government surveilling the users?
• Which IP addresses are blocked?
• Are the Chinese supplying equipment, software or expertise for surveillance and content filtering?
• How fast are they planning to extend WiFi access?

OK -- that is today, but what about the future?

I've been in Scandinavia and Vietnam this year and have not bothered to get a SIM card for my phone -- WiFi was available wherever I went. In the US, WiFi access is providing competition for the cellular network, cable companies are creating public hotspots using home and commercial routers for backhaul and Fon is doing the same in Europe.

The US and Europe have robust fourth generation cellular networks with near ubiquitous backhaul and radio coverage, but nearly all Cuban cellular connectivity is second generation. In an earlier post, I suggested that Cuba forgo short term cellular connectivity. Can they substitute WiFi in the interim? Speaking at the 10th Congress of the Young Communist League of Cuba, Deputy Minister of Communications Jose Luis Perdomo hinted that that might be their strategy.

The following graph from Akami's State of the Internet report shows total (upload and download) global monthly mobile voice and data as measured by Ericsson (PetaBytes per month).

Voice calls are rapidly diminishing as a percentage of mobile data. By 2020, applications like IMO, Skype, WhatsApp and Google Hangouts will have rendered the distinction between voice and data meaningless -- it's all bits.

In five years, the Cuban economy will probably be stronger, the embargo will probably be history and we will know the cost and performance of 5G cellular, 2020 WiFi and other wireless equipment. Can Cuba get by with 2G phone service and expanded WiFi access until that time?

Internet geeks have a saying: "IP everywhere" (even over carrier pigeon). Cuba might become the first "IPv6 everywhere" nation.

Update 8/27/2015

The market research firm IHS reports that Voice over IP (VoIP) and IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) equipment sales to carriers are up by 46% over the second quarter of 2014 and Huawei is the leading supplier of the equipment.

Calls using VoIP, like Skype or Google Voice, have been competing with circuit switched calls for many years -- making their "best effort" to deliver high quality. At times, the quality was not as good as circuit switched calls, but IMS calls use more complex protocols to deliver superior quality.

The fact that sales of VoIP and IMS equipment to "cell phone" operators are growing rapidly foreshadows the increased substitution of "data" for "voice" suggests that Cuba may forget about circuit-switched calling going forward.

I spoke with IHS analyst Stephane Teral about the future of the cellular network in Cuba, and, while he does think they could move to an all IP network, he does not feel they can afford to wait for 5G technology, saying:

They need LTE to bring their economy up to speed. It's proven that there is a direct positive correlation between broadband infrastructure and economic growth. I'm sure some investors will pop up; someone will raise the money to build the network.

Regardless, Cuba is no longer expanding the current 2G network -- the covered population has remained constant for two years.

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Update 9/7/2015

Reader Hédel Nuñez Bolívar shared the news that Connectify is happy to give their software to Cubans sharing WiFi links. They are sharing 1 mbps links, so it will be slow, but better than nothing.

Good for them!

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Update 10/1/2015

Several blogs and Web sites, for example Cubanet, have published the following during the last few days:

La avidez de los cubanos por navegar por la red ha hecho que se produzcan unas 55 000 conexiones en cada uno de los 35 puntos de wifi repartidos por la isla, y de ellas 8.000 de forma simultánea, según datos oficiales.

I've searched the ETECSA and Granma Web sites and cannot find the "official source" of these figures; furthermore, I cannot figure our what they are claiming.

Are they saying that an average of 55,000 2 CUC ticket sales have been made at each hotspot around the island since they began service? Are they saying a single hotspot can support 8,000 simultaneous connections per day???

Does anyone know what the official source of this data is and what they are actually claiming? The hype continues.

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Update 10/4/2015

People living outside of Cuba can now purchase WiFi access for Cubans using the "top off" service, Ding.com. The recipient must have a Nauta account and the cost is 10 CUC for five hours of WiFi access. If it is possible to receive multiple five-hour contributions, Cuban "bisneros" may use them to stock up on hours.

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Update 11/13/2015

ETECSA has opened eight new WiFi hotspots and plans to open 12 more by the end of the year. The new hotspots are in parks in the provinces of Pinar del Rio, Cienfuegos, Ciego de Avila, Las Tunas, Matanzas, Villa Clara and Mayabeque, as well as a square in Sancti Spiritus. This is consistent with Cuba's historic emphasis on geographically spread connectivity (relative to other nations at their state of Internet development).

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Update 11/25/2015

Four new WiFi access hotspots have been opened. My guess is that this slow rate of implementation is due to lack of backhaul, but that is just a guess. It would be interesting to know the utilization rates and financial returns for the hotspots.

A woman interviewed at the new Holguín hotspot, shown below, said she welcomed the hotspot, but would only come there during the day for fear of crime.

Holguín WiFi access hotspot -- standing room only.

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Update December 8, 2015

Spokesmen from ETECSA and the "Grupo Nacional de Conectividad Wifi" were interviewed about the WiFi access points. They said the access points have 2.4 GHz 5 GHz channels and there may be up to 30 1-Mbps users on each. But, shouldn't the 5 GHz channel be faster and shouldn't the 2.4 GHz channel carry further? Does a user select a frequency when connecting or is that automatic? They also blamed poor performance on users who download videos or share their connection using Connectify (see above), sounding a bit like our mobile carriers when they speak of "bandwidth hogs." A final question -- what is Grupo Nacional de Conectividad Wifi?

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Update 2/5/2016

A second vendor, Habla Cuba, is now offering Nauta WiFi recharging online. I wonder how much revenue ETECSA earns from foreign purchase of telephone and WiFi access minutes.

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Update 6/22/2016

Havana Times reports on incidents of hacking at ETECSA hotspots. Hackers create sites that look like the ETECSA login page and when a user tries to log in, the spoofed site records their user name and password, then displays an error message. This spoof is credible because ETECSA service is unreliable, so users are not surprised by system errors.

Hackers are also using "man in the middle" attacks -- capturing information that flows between the user and the Internet.

Since Cuba surveils Internet usage, a user might lose more than his or her prepaid access time -- a hacker could do things that would attract the attention of the authorities.

Users are advised to keep track of the number of minutes they have in their account and to avoid logging on if there is a laptop nearby, but complaining to ETECSA after being hacked is pointless because they do not assume responsibility for hacks. They need to hire a security consultant.

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Update 11/26 2016

Warhol P. has posted a strong, frustrated critique of ETECSA's WiFi service, writing, for example

"Not to mention the email service. You can sit and watch the icon refreshing for half an hour without any emails coming in, using up all of your credit. It’s mind-baffling and abusive."

The post ends with seven sarcastic questions for ETECSA.

Based on this, it seems that the service has not improved and it remains far worse than what we think of as WiFi Internet access in other nations. It also makes ETECSA's claim that 35% of the population are Internet users meaningless.

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Update 12/21/2016

ETECSA has cut the price of its internet service by an average of 25 percent and announced a new prepay offer. National internet access now costs USD 0.25 an hour while international access has been cut to USD 1.5. The new prepay bundle includes 5MB of data for USD 1.5, to be used within 30 days, but, unused capacity may be rolled over if the user renews for the following month.

This is a big gain for Cubans, but still extremely expensive and slow and inconvenient.

A leaked ETECSA presentation on home Internet connectivity in Cuba

I don't criticize to knock the system down. On the contrary, I criticize to perfect the system.
Carlos Alberto Pérez

This post has taken several twists and turns.

I started out to write a post commenting on an ETECSA PowerPoint presentation on their plan for home Internet connectivity. The presentation had been leaked by Carlos Alberto Pérez on his blog Chiringa de Cuba on June 23. (The presentation is supported by another document leaked by Pérez, an Executive Summary of a National Strategy for the development of broadband connectivity infrastructure in Cuba -- English translation here). In addition to some analysis of the plan, I was going to discuss the role of Chinese equipment suppliers, predominantly Huawei.

Then, on June 25, ETECSA denied the validity of the leaked document, saying it was used only for training. They said the tentative prices shown were incorrect, but did not retract the substance of the presentation, which shows a plan to provide DSL service to some Cuban homes using Chinese equipment.

That denial was followed by the blocking of access to Pérez' blog, presumably because he had published the leaked document.

They subsequently restored access to the original post, but to be safe, I have put a copy here, and invite people to add comments to it. There is also a backup of the Strategy document here. (As they say, information wants to be free).

I will provide my reactions to the leaked document here and save the reflections on the Chinese role for a second post.

The presentation says ETECSA plans to roll out asymmetric (faster download than upload) DSL service using Chinese equipment in an unspecified number of central offices. As we see in the following leaked slide, they will use Huawei ME 60 gateways between the phone and IP networks and have ordered 15,000 TP Link TD 8840T modems for homes. I do not know, but it seems reasonable to guess that the digital multiplexers (DSLAMs) installed in the central offices will be from Huawei as well. (I'll get to the question marks later).

The following price slide was included in the presentation, but ETECSA has said this was only a place-holder for training purposes and I will take them at their word -- consider these prices only as possibilities:

These prices may be higher than we eventually see, but there will surely be a significant number of people who cannot afford a DSL connection so we can imagine people sharing accounts and a black market for reselling time.

The following slide differentiates between national and international access, so I presume that the actual prices will take that into account. That would be reasonable since most international access will be over congested satellite links. The slides say nothing about which, if any, international sites will be blocked.

The above slide also differentiates speed levels, times of day and days of the week. I suspect the actual pricing will take time and day into account, but that may or may not be the case for the different speeds that are shown. Varying infrastructure will cause speed differences regardless of price.

Before a home can receive DSL service, the equipment in the central office serving it must be upgraded and a relatively short, high quality phone line must run between the home and its central office. (That is one of the question marks in previous diagram).

Cuba reported 3,882,424 private homes (2012) and 939,500 residential phone lines. That means around 2.9 million homes would have to be wired before they could have Internet service. The presentation says they will give priority to homes that already have land lines and those belonging to the self-employed. (The former is obvious and the latter interesting).

Cuba reports having 688 central offices (2013), few of which contain DSL equipment. Most would have to be upgraded in order to provide DSL service.

Once connected, what will be the data transmission speed? The above slide shows asymmetric (down/up) connection speeds ranging from 128/64 to 8,192/768 kb/s. With DSL technology, transmission speed depends upon the distance of a home from its central office and the condition of the copper lines connecting them. These are always best effort numbers -- "up to" the stated speeds.

Let me give an example, I live Los Angeles and Google Maps says I am 1.1 mile from my central office. Verizon offers me two service levels: "high speed" DSL service is .5-1 mb/s and "enhanced" service is from 1.5-3 mb/s, for an extra $10 per month. To be fair, the copper in my neighborhood is 70 years old, but I doubt that many Cuban customers will be able to get 8,192 kb/s.

There is also a slide showing day/night and weekday/weekend traffic patterns. Judging from the y-axis, I am guessing that this is showing international traffic, which is heavy during week days. Before a user logs on, he or she will be able to measure their current connection speed before starting a session and using their hours.

The Internet connection is the second question mark in the previous diagram. What are the connection speeds between the central offices and the Internet? In the US, central offices are connected by high speed fiber, but I know little about Cuba. For example, in Havana, some or all central offices may be connected to a fiber backbone, but what of the link from there to the Internet? Havana is far from the undersea cable landing to the east, so I imagine those links are via congested satellites.

The bottom line is that this is an early step toward modern home connectivity using yesterday's technology and I hope Cubans are planning to leapfrog today's technology in the long run.

Well, that is a little tea reading from the leaked slides. It is too bad that the situation is so opaque that we have to guess about ETECSA and their plans and it is even worse that they seem to have blocked Pérez' blog. He is an asset, not a threat -- as he has stated "I don't criticize to knock the system down. On the contrary, I criticize to perfect the system."

I think the involvement of Chinese suppliers is more interesting than this leak, and I will take that up in a subsequent post.

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Update 6/29/3025

Ted Henken told me that the problem with accessing Chiringadecuba.com may not have been government blocking but expiration of the domain name, and it seems he was correct.

I did a whois lookup and it turns out the domain expiration date was 2015-06-26. I then checked at the registrar, Name.com, and saw that chiringadecuba.com is not available. It sounds like it may have expired, but they are giving Perez a grace period within which to re-activate it. Since he would not have a US credit card, there may be some difficulty with that.

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Update 6/29/2015

Chiringadecuba.com is online again and the expiration date has been extended till next year. My apologies to ETECSA for fearing that they may have blocked access.

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Update 1/27/2016

Huawei has tested their new technology, g.fast, in Panama. The technology trial ran for two months and they achieved speeds averaging 500 Mbps to download and 150 Mbps to upload, over existing copper lines.

I wonder if that is the technology they will be deploying in Cuba and how it will perform over Cuban infrastructure.

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Update 2/1/2016

ETECSA has announced a pilot home connectivity project in two Havana neighborhoods. The Associated Press report says Cubans in Old Havana will be able to "order service through fiber optic connections operated with Chinese telecom operator Huawei."

I would be surprised if they are talking about fiber to the premises -- hybrid fiber/copper is more likely. They also said they would being allowing cafes, bars and restaurants to begin ordering broadband service. No dates or prices were given.

I have also heard from a reader that some casas particulares are offering Internet connectivity in Havana, but I do not know how they are connected or at what speed and cost.

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Update 2/11/2016

The anti-Castro Internet advocacy group Foundation for Human Rights in Cuba has released a post suggesting that the choice of Huawei for the home-access pilot in Old Havana was motivated by Huawei's expertise in censorship and surveillance.

This Old Havana pilot deployment is quite limited, but Huawei is also the equipment vendor for forthcoming DSL home connectivity and Cuba's WiFi hotpots.

While the embargo was in effect, Huawei was a logical choice for Internet infrastructure in Cuba, but today, the embargo is not keeping the Cubans from considering offers from US and other competitors. Huawei's experience with and openness to censorship and surveillance may indeed offer them a competitive advantage in Cuba.

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Update 2/13/2016

I mentioned the assertion by The Foundation for Human Rights that experience with and an openness to surveillance and censorship gave Huawei a competitive advantage against US infrastructure providers to Doug Madory, but he disagreed, saying:

No not really. There are plenty of companies that offer products that can be used for surveillance and censorship -- see the usage of Blue Coat of Canada in Syria. Huawei is both inexpensive and not western. Those are probably bigger reasons.

At The Economist event (last December) I spoke with the country manager (of a US firm) for Cuba and he said he was in the room for one of the main presentations from Hauwei to ETECSA. He said Hauwei had brought a dozen engineers and had put a lot of work into their proposal for a telecom build-out. Hauwei wanted this deal very much.

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Update 10/27/2016

Norges Rodriguez, ‏@norges14, has pointed out that ETECSA began planning for home DSL in 2012. The following is a copy of cover letter of the memo initiating the planning process and you can download the entire memo here.

Reading it, I am struck by the bureaucracy . Bureaucracy and vested interests may be the biggest obstacles faced by the Cuban Internet. (This reminds me of their wacky list of occupations that are authorized for self-employment).

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Update 1/12/2017

The home-connectivity trial in Old Havana is underway and a friend tells me the DSL rollout will begin soon in Santa Clara and Granma.

My guess is that it will only be in the provincial capitals and only some neighborhoods. If ETECSA is implementing the plan foreshadowed in this post, they will be upgrading central offices that are in areas with high population density and phone wires that are in good condition.

My friend heard the prices would be:

15 cuc 30 horas, 256 kb/s
30 cuc 30 horas, 512kb/s
45 cuc 30 horas, 1mb/s

The Web site Cibercuba says the prices will be approximately:

15 cuc 30 horas, 256 kb/s
50 cuc 30 horas, 512kb/s
70 cuc 30 horas, 1mb/s
115 cuc 30 horas, 2mb/s

Both agree that users will be required to recharge at least once per month.

The good news is that more Cubans will be able to have Internet connectivity in their homes, but the bad news is that this is a lot of money for very slow service by today's standards.

Speeds of 256kkps to 2mbps are very slow using modern DSL equipment. That indicates that either backhaul from the central offices to the Internet is very slow and has to be conserved, the wiring between the central office and the customer premises is in very bad condition, or that the distances between the central office and users are great -- or it could be all of those. A darker thought is that they don't want people using the Internet very much.

Regardless, this speed range is even lower than that anticipated in the leaked document described above. If Cuba rolls out slow home DSL, they will be where the US was in the 1990s.

As I have stated many times -- Cuba should not be recapitulating the evolution of Internet connectivity from dial-up, to DSL, to hybrid fiber-cable or fast DSL to fiber to the premises. They should leapfrog to next-generation technology and, more important, next-generation policy -- even if it means accepting (dreaded) direct foreign investment.

Cuba's WiFi access plan raises intresting questions.

Do we see the outline of a future national fiber backbone?

Luis Manuel Díaz Naranjo, ETECSA Director of Communications, has announced that during the coming weeks, they plan to roll out 35 WiFi access points. As shown here, they will be distributed throughout the island.

Forthcoming WiFi access locations -- hint of a backbone?

Mr. Díaz said the access points would accommodate 50-100 or more simultaneous users at speeds up to "1MB" per second. (I assume he means megabit, not megabyte). He also announced that ETECSA's hourly access charge would be permanently cut to 2 CUC. This is evidently a rollout of an earlier trial in Santiago de Cuba.

While these access points are not yet operating, Carlos Alberto Pérez has spotted the equipment at one of the Havana locations. The equipment is supplied by the Chinese company Huawei, which is bad news for US companies.

Three Huawei WiFi antennae in Havana

That is all I know about this new Cuban path to the Internet, but it raises several interesting questions and points.

For a start, how do they achieve backhaul speeds to support 50-100 simultaneous users at up to 1 mb/s at an access point? The announcement makes it clear that some access points will be more powerful than others. Assuming they allow international access, are some linked to the undersea cable and others linked to satellites?

Regardless of the international link, how is the link made from the access point to the international connection -- fiber, copper, wireless, a combination? The answer will differ for each access point. Looking back at the above map, do we see the outline of a future national fiber backbone?

I have seen a couple of presentation slides showing a four-phase "planned" fiber backbone connecting many of the provinces shown on the access-point map. Eight of them are included in the first phase of the backbone.

Another question has to do with the equipment vendor, Huawei. Lina Pedraza Rodríguez, Cuban Minister of Finance and Prices, said that Cuba is in "very advanced" negotiations with Huawei, at the recent World Economic Forum on Latin America.

Could she have been referring to the wireless and backhaul equipment for these access points? Might she have been thinking of a possible upgrade to DSL of Cuba's telephone central offices, as suggested by the announced plan to make low-speed broadband connectivity available to half of the homes in Cuba by 2020? Or could she have been thinking of the plan to connect all Cuban schools or even a national fiber backbone like the one in the slides I saw?

Regardless, one wonders how the work will be financed, what sort of concessions ETECSA has made, and what this means for US telecommunication equipment and service providers who hope to do business in Cuba. I assume the installation is being done by ETECSA employees -- I hope they are hiring some of the folks who have been building out unauthorized WiFi LANS.

Will the government block access to some sites and services? Freedom House ranks the Cuban Internet as not free for political and cultural reasons, but there is also the possibility of blocking access for economic reasons. For example Skype and FaceTime are blocked in Cuba. Could that be to protect ETECSA phone call revenue?

Skype recommends 100 kb/s upload and download speed with reasonable latency. As Doug Madory has shown, Cuban undersea cable links have a latency of around 200 milliseconds, so Skype would work for international calls from cable-connected access points.

Latencies: 600 msec satellite (A), 200 msec cable (C)

Other developing nations have faced this same tradeoff. My favorite example was India during the mid 1990s when voice calls over the Internet were explicitly illegal, yet shops offering the service advertised in the newspaper and had signs on their storefronts.

This is a major rollout by Cuban standards, but it is a drop in the bucket. Does it signify a policy shift? The overriding question has to do with the goal of the Cuban government. Is the goal to remain in power, maximize ETECSA profit, maximize government profit, transfer wealth to ETECSA investors, etc. or is it to provide affordable, modern Internet connectivity to the Cuban people?

Update 6/22/2015

The WiFi hotspot in Santiago de Cuba is on line and this report makes it sound like the connection is quite slow and congested at peak hours -- whether hard wired or by WiFi. That is a bad sign -- if Santiago is not connected to the undersea cable, which region is?

Update 6/28/2015

The photo of three Huawei WiFi antennae shown above is from the blog of Carlos Alberto Pérez, but his blog is no longer accessible online.

On June 23, Pérez published a leaked document -- a presentation on ETECSA's plan for home Internet connectivity. ETECSA has denied the validity of the leaked document, saying it was used for training. They said the tentative prices shown were incorrect, but did not retract the substance of the presentation, which shows plans to provide DSL service to some Cuban homes using Chinese equipment.

It seems likely that Pérez' blog was blocked because he published the leaked document.

Update 7/3/2015

The new WiFi hotspots are now online. If you have used one, let me know what the speed and user experience was like.

Update 8/11/2015

The strategic role of hotspots in providing interim connectivity in the short run.

The possibility of a uniquely Cuban Internet

This post is not about what I think will happen, but to begin discussion of what the Cuban government could do if the goal were to provide a modern, open Internet with affordable (free in some cases?) access.

The Cuban Internet is in a sorry state. Freedom House ranks Cuban Internet freedom 62nd among the 65 nations they survey and the UN International Telecommunications Union ranks Cuban information and communication technology development last among 32 nations in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Historically, there are three primary causes for the sad state of the Cuban Internet -- the US trade embargo, Cuban poverty at the time of their connection to the Internet and the government's fear of information. (We'll discuss a possible new constraint, ETECSA, later).

President Obama has lifted the first barrier and, when we look at other poor Latin America and Caribbean nations, we see that Cuba could afford a better Internet than it currently has.

That leaves fear of an open Internet. The government says the Internet is a priority and they want to expand access as quickly as financially feasible. I am skeptical, but let’s assume they are sincere – what might they do in the short term and the long term?

In the short term

Cuba cannot afford ubiquitous, modern Internet infrastructure today – they need low-cost interim action while planning for the long term. Here are some low-cost ways they could improve the Internet in the short run:

• Run a pilot study using the same sort of satellite equipment that Alan Gross was arrested for bringing into the country and, If successful, follow with  a national roll out – with access points marketed and supported by Cuba’s recently-legal small business people.
• Equip central offices with equipment to upgrade dial-up to DSL accounts.
• Use terrestrial wireless links to establish points of presence in rural locations.
• Legitimatize and support local area streetnets.
• Legitimatize and support the weekly “packages” of movies, TV series episodes, magazines and software that are distributed by independent vendors on flash drives. (This would requires some kind of copyright agreement).
• Provide high-speed connectivity to universities and the medical network over the ALBA-1 undersea cable.
• Begin networking of Cuban schools and improve connectivity at the Youth Computer Clubs
• Legitimatize and support the development and export of Cuban software and software services.
• Encourage and support the establishment of a vital startup community.

What about the long term?

Long range planning, addressing technology and, more important, infrastructure ownership and regulation policy, should begin immediately.

Cuba has little Internet infrastructure. There is an undersea cable to Venezuela, but little fiber on the island. (Eventually, Cuba might take control of the cable being installed between Guantánamo and Florida). Nearly all home connections are dial-up and the cell network is obsolete 2G technology. There are 573 public access computers in 155 locations, but they are slow and an hour online costs nearly a week’s pay for many workers.

Cuba should leapfrog today’s technology, looking toward developments that are five or more years out – 5G  mobile communication, high frequency wireless by Google and others, the satellite constellation projects from SpaceX and OneWeb, connectivity using an undersea cable from Havana and perhaps the one at Guantánamo, etc. Routing traffic using version 6 of the Internet protocol will prepare them for the “Internet of things.”

The long range planning of technology is necessary, but formulating policies for ownership of infrastructure and regulation is more important -- not only for Cubans, but for the rest of the world as well if the Cuban experience leads to innovative policies.

The conventional wisdom is that Cuba should invite foreign companies to install infrastructure – a path many developing nations have followed with marginal success. It is not certain that Cuba, with its current government and weak economy, could attract foreign investment, but even if could, I would hate to see Cuba's Internet future in the hands of companies like AT&T or Orange.

If they do go with foreign investment, I would not be surprised to see them partnering with Google rather than a traditional ISP – Google executives have visited Cuba and Google is clearly interested in global connectivity. My experience in the US leads me to trust Google to do a better job than the incumbent ISPs, but, I would still have to ask -- in the long run, why should we expect Google to be better for the Cuban people than a traditional ISP? (I'd ask the same question of aspiring global satellite ISPs SpaceX and OneWeb).

Cuba should go slowly and consider a broad range of infrastructure ownership policies like municipal ownership in Stockholm, government as a venture capitalist in Singapore, government as rural wholesale backbone provider as in India, individual ownership of final links, etc. Cuban policy makers should consider a broad range of policy models -- Chile, Iceland, Vietnam, Estonia, etc. etc.

In 1997, fear of free speech led the government to squelch the Internet, but today there is another potential stumbling block – ETECSA, Cuba’s monopoly Internet service provider. ETECSA is usually described as a state-owned monopoly, but it’s privately owned by a murky collection of investors (rumored to include Fidel and Raúl Castro) and regulated by the Ministry of Communication.

The relationship between ETECSA and the Ministry is unclear – which organization makes investment decisions, sets prices, gets the profits or absorbs the losses, etc.?

Cynics predict the Cuban Internet will undergo a Soviet-style sell-off to foreign investors who will run it for their profit. But, if the Cuban government sincerely embraces its socialist goals, it has a chance to create a uniquely Cuban Internet with the goal of providing universal, affordable access to its citizens rather than making profit for private ISPs, ETECSA or the government. I’m skeptical, but hope I’m wrong.

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Update 3/18/2015

One of my long-term suggestions was that Cuba keep an eye on OneWeb, which hopes to provide global satellite connectivity. CEO Greg Wyler, speaking at the Satellite 2015 Conference yesterday, said they hope to be offering service by 2019 -- providing $250 ground stations that require no setup and establish a 50 mbps connection to the Internet and a WiFi, LTE, 3G and 2G local area network.

One of my short-term suggestions was that Cuba deploy geostationary satellite ground stations. They could do that today, but, if OneWeb is successful, their satellite links will be cheaper and superior to today's satellite offerings in every way.

Grag Wyler speaking:

A OneWeb ground station -- no setup required:

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Update 3/22/2015

It seems that Internet access at the University of Santiago de Cuba has been significantly improved. I am being a vague because the post I read has been translated into English and is hard to follow. It sounds like the university now has a fiber link and speed and data caps have improved significantly.

Can someone fill me in on the details of this upgrade and on the general state of connectivity at Cuban universities?

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Update 3/28/2015

Ricardo Alarcon, head of the Ministry of Higher Education announced a deal with ETECSA to substantially improve university Internet access. It sounds like every university will have both domestic and international links. The article is vague and inconsistent on technical details, but it also says students will have access to 40,000 digital magazines -- double the previous amount.

The article also refers to an upgrade to the university network, REDUNIV. The figure below was taken from a PowerPoint presentation last updated in 2005. I am saddened to see a frame relay backbone, but I am sure it has been upgraded since that time. Does anyone have information about the current network?

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Update 5/11/2015

I suggested that Cuba would be better off owning and controlling their telecommunication infrastructure rather than turning it over to foreign investors and they may be heading in that direction.

Lina Pedraza Rodríguez, Cuban Minister of Finance and Prices, said that Cuba is in "very advanced" negotiations with Huawei at the World Economic Forum on Latin America last week.

Pedraza also said the Cuban telecoms sector would be open to all foreign companies but also noted that the country wanted to avoid the "negative parts of the Internet."

Pedreza also feels that things are moving slowly with the US and called for the elimination of our trade embargo.

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Update 5/28/2015

One of my short-run suggestions was to legitimatize and support shared WiFi hotspots. Raymond J. Delgado Sutil has written a post that elaborates on that suggestion. He estimates that ETECSA's revenue from Internet access "navigation rooms" is around 907,000 CUC per year and the cost of installing WiFi access points at each navigation room and Youth Computer Club location would be about $200,000. Users would use their own computers and phones, eliminating the need for more computers in the navigation rooms. He says ETECSA should "just do it" rather than conducting a "study."

Unfortunately, Delgado does not mention backhaul speed at the navigation rooms or whether they connect to the undersea cable for international traffic. The backhaul speed is only 2 mb/s at the ballyhooed free hotspot of the artist Kcho. At that speed, performance would be very poor whether access was over WiFi or using one of the original hard-wired computers. Similarly, if international access were routed over satellite, response would be very slow.

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Update 7/16/2015

Raul Castro has reported that Cuba's economy is growing at a 4.7 percent annual rate (due to increased tourism?) and Cuba is "strictly meeting its debt obligations with foreign creditors and suppliers." A stronger economy will enable Cuba to pursue a relatively independent Internet strategy, without excessive reliance on foreign investment.

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Update 7/18/2015

Speaking at the 10th Congress of the Young Communist League of Cuba, Deputy Minister of Communications Jose Luis Perdomo said they were working on connectivity from homes, lower costs, access from educational, health, scientific, cultural and sport centers as well as industrial, business and service centers.

More concretely, he said they planned provide Internet service to 3G cellular users and deploy WiFi in Havana and provincial capitals. There is little 3G cellular today -- does that mean they plan to extend it? He also said they were deploying IPv6.

Deputy Minister of Communications Jose Luis Perdomo

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Update 11/19/2015

We suggested that Cuba shift to IPv6 and, as the following figure shows, they are routing IPv6 traffic over Tata and Newcomm (satellite) networks, but not Telefonica. I believe the "other" traffic is internal to Cuba -- peering with CENIAI Internet (AS10569).

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Update 1/17/2016

In considering future technology, infrastructure ownership and policy options, Cuba should look at the experience of others. Steve Song has just posted his annual Africa Telecoms Infrastructure review. The review might provide some insights for Cuban policy makers and they should be consulting with folks like Steve Song.

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Update 9/29/2016

Hybrid fiber-wireless is another future technology Cuba should track. Google, cell phone companies and others are experimenting with a number of options for "last kilometer" technology. One in particular, PCell wireless, might turn out to be appropriate in Cuba if it proves to be practical.

Demonstrations of PCells in labs are impressive, allowing full speed wireless connections to computers or mobile devices that are inches apart. One would expect closely situated radios operating in the same frequency band to interfere with each other, but PCells capitalize upon interference, analyzing it to create very small zones of clear reception.

It remains to be seen how this technology works on the street as opposed to the lab and Webpass, a boutique high speed Internet service provider that was recently acquired by Google, and Nokia are both evaluating PCell technology. If it turns out to be effective, PCell might be particularly appropriate in Cuba with its penchant for do-it yourself improvisation.

PCell access points are small and distributed compared to conventional cell towers and, if they turn out to be effective, they could be installed by the people -- like a "street net." They remind me of the home-made dishes people used to pirate TV signals broadcast from the Havana Libre hotel back in the day and the installation of local area network wiring in California schools by students and staff during "Net Days."

PCell access points

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Update 10/5/2016

In this post, I have suggested several short-run, interim steps Cuba could take while evaluating and planning for leapfrogging to next-generation infrastructure when they are financially and politically ready to create a modern Internet. I wrote the post about a year and a half ago, and started by saying that it was what I hoped would happen, not what I expected to happen.

There have been some short-run improvements during the last 18 months, but not all that I had hoped for. I have no idea what, if any, plans have been made for leapfrogging to next-generation infrastructure -- the planning process is not open or transparent.

One thing is for sure -- there will be no leapfrogging on infrastructure without leapfrogging to next-generation policy on infrastructure ownership and regulation. Next generation policy should be geared toward meeting economic and social goals, not to maintaining telecommunication bureaucracy and revenue or on politics. As we see below, the world is trending in that direction.

Global trend toward 4th generation regulation, based on social and economic goals

And, fourth generation regulation is correlated with broadband connectivity: