Two posts show little progress in a year and a half

In July 2015, a CNN News post described the then new WiFi hotspots in Havana. The post included a two-minute video clip that centered around an interview of Alexi, a university student who used the hotspot to speak with his mother in Italy. He says it is uncomfortable and expensive, but hopes it will be cheaper in the future and his "dream" is to have Internet connectivity at home.

CNN just published a new post on the WiFi hotspots, which also features interviews of WiFi users. They too are speaking with family members and their complaints are similar toAlexi's -- it is expensive, unreliable, uncomfortable and there is no privacy. In fact, the new post includes the old video of Alexi without mentioning that it was a year and a half old -- it fits right in.

After complaining, one woman concludes "But we're learning to adapt." She is resigned.

Alexi's dream is a little closer to coming true than it was in 2015. The access price is 25 percent lower and a home-connectivity trial is underway, if Internet service becomes available at his home and he can afford it, it will be much slower and more expensive than in other nations.

Both videos point out that Cuba is one of the least connected nations in the world. The hotspots are better than nothing, but they are a drop in the bucket. The Cuban Internet is marginally better than when the hotspots opened in the summer of 2015, but the gap between Cuba and the rest of the world has widened significantly during that time.

The same video is shown in both post.

Google will provide a free hotspot in Havana

The hotspot when it opened last March

A year ago, Cuban artist Kcho opened a free public hotspot with a DSL connection to the Internet. Today, Google announced that they would be providing a 70 mbps link from Kcho's studio to the Internet. As before, Kcho is paying the bill and providing free connectivity.

The hotspot will be open five days a week, from 7 a.m. to midnight, for about 40 people at a time. Google will also provide Chromebooks and Cardboard viewers (with phones??) at the center.

Forty people sharing 70 mbps is slow and 40 people in a nation of over 11 million is not meaningful, but, like the DSL link last year, it will generate a lot of publicity. (If it turns out they are provisioning 70 mbps for each of 40 users, 2.8 gbps, it will become a cool demonstration/inspireation site).

Kcho being interviewed

It would be interesting to know what the infrastructure supporting this hotspot looks like and whether it is related to the recently announced broadband pilot study for parts of Old Havana. (Scroll to the end of the post).

Google's announcement says they are "also exploring additional possibilities around increasing and improving Internet access, but they’re at early stages." Google could do so much more. For example, they have installed wholesale fiber backbones in two African capitals and are offering service to competing retail ISPs. It's hard to imagine ETECSA allowing that, but one can dream ...

Google's wholesale fiber backbones

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Update 3/23/2016

Here is a short video clip of Kcho and Google Representative Brett Perlmutter outside Kcho's studio, talking about their plans for connectivity, Chromebooks and Cardboard.



I've made inquiries, but still have no details on the Internet link. Stay tuned.

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Update 3/23/2016

Laptops on a table inside the new Google technology center that will offer free internet at the studio of Cuban artist Alexis Leiva Machado, better known as Kcho.

I was hoping to see Pixel Chromebooks, but this is just a start -- Google announced that they would accomodate 40 simultainous users and there would also be Google Cardboard and phones.

Ramón Espinosa/AP

A Universiy of Havana hot zone?

A Cuban WiFi zone on and around the University of Havana?

Alejandro Ramos Encinosa, from the University of Havana, has written a short description of a campus WiFi project that would bring connectivity to the UH campus and nearby neighborhoods. Ramos says there are over 25,000 students on campus and only about 3,000 computers in labs. Like ETECSA's public WiFi hotpsots, students will access the network using their own devices, saving the university capital and maintenance costs.

It is noteworthy that they plan to offer access to non-students who are near the campus. A few Cubans have been able to gain unauthorized access to the networks of universities and other organizations, but it sounds like the university intends to provide open access in this case.

It is not clear whether the off-campus access will be paid or free. (I assume it will be free for students). The only free public access project I know of in Cuba was a hotspot opened up by the artist Kcho, but that was more of a symbolic photo op than meaningful infrastructure.

Free or paid, if 25,000 students and the public are to use this network, it will need a fast connection to the Internet (or even the Cuban intranet if that is the intention). I assume that backhaul capacity would have to be provided by ETECSA, in which case they might charge for public access as they do with their existing hotspots.

<random speculation>
Since I don't know what is actually planned and what the status of the project is, I can offer some highly speculative suggestions. Might students be involved in the installation of the network -- something along the lines of Net Days, which I described in a post on connecting Cuban schools? If there is sufficient backhaul capacity, could they deploy mesh networks in the neighborhoods around the campus -- perhaps look at Guifi Net or the adhoc "street net" LANs in Havana.
</ random speculation>

If you are familiar with the project, let us know about what is planned and its status.

Cuban Internet infrastructure ownership and regulation alternatives

It is too soon and too simple to say that Google was turned away out of simple ETECSA greed.

I have suggested a number of things Google might do in Cuba, including providing Internet connectivity. Last summer it was widely reported that Google had offered free connectivity in Cuba, but the proposal was rejected, perhaps because of mistrust in Google or the US government.

Google has refused to share their proposal with me, but I have a guess as to what it may have been and, if my guess is correct, why it was rejected.

My guess is that they proposed a fiber backbone for Havana (and perhaps other cities) as part of their Project Link. Project Link is serving two metro areas in Uganda, including the capital, Kampala and is deploying fiber in three metro areas in Ghana, including the capital, Accra.

Meshed (i. e. reliable), open, wholesale Project Link fiber backbones

It is important to note that Google is not selling retail service, but providing capacity to competing Internet service providers and mobile operators. As African Internet pioneer Steve Song points out, the Ugandan service providers have come to trust in Google -- realizing that they are not competing at the retail level and that they are offering transparent, flat-rate pricing to all comers. It is noteworthy that Google is not subsidizing Project Link -- the backbones are self-sustaining.

Until now, the wholesale customers have been Internet service providers and mobile operators, but things became a bit more interesting earlier this month, when Google announced that they had deployed a wholesale WiFi network with 120 public access hotzones in Kampala and more to come. They have signed up their first retail WiFi provider Roke Telkom.

Google WiFi antenna on a Kampala rooftop, BBC News

The service is only a few days old (I could not find mention of it on the Roke Web site), but I found a first-impression review. The reviewer did not say how many people were online, but the speed was fairly low -- about 100 Kbps. On the other hand, the sign-up process was painlessly handled using his mobile phone and the key "feature" is Roke's flat rate prices: 29 cents per day, $1.44 per week or $5.17 per month.

Well, that is my guess as to what Google proposed -- now for my guess as to why Cuba declined the proposal.

I do not know what ETECSA charges for access to their Havana fiber (or how they price it internally for themselves), but I would be amazed if it were nearly as low as what Google is charging in Africa. But I do know what ETECSA is charging for WiFi access -- about $2 per hour. Two dollars would buy more than a week in Kampala and it would not be necessary to stand in lines or pay scalpers to purchase time.

(You can check out a two-minute BBC News clip on the Fiber backbone and WiFi deployment here).

I wish Google's proposal was rejected for reasons of political mistrust, because political trust is growing among the Cuban people and distrust will fade, but mistrust seems a less likely cause than fear of competition for ETECSA. As I've said, I do not understand ETECSA's ownership structure, but I have been assured that it is government controlled. If the Cuban government insists upon protecting ETECSA's profit and maximizing government revenue, Kampala will leave Havana in the dust.

But, it is too soon and too simple to say that Google was turned away because of ETECSA greed.

Kampala has a Google backbone, but it also has competing retailers and there are no competing retailers in Cuba. Attracting retailers to a Google backbone in Havana would require the sort of trust that has developed in Kampala. They would have to be convinced that everyone, including ETECSA retail, would be paying the same price. (I would expect ETECSA retail to do quite well in a competitive Cuban market -- they have assets, employees, Cuban experience, brand recognition, etc.).

It is a lot easier to dig trenches and light fiber than it is to attract retail competitors, and Google may have been rejected because their offer came too soon.

Cuba needs time to plan a very difficult transition in which the roles of ETECSA, national and municipal governments and wholesale and retail connectivity providers are considered. Perhaps they will ultimately decide upon a Kampala-like solution with Google and perhaps other wholesalers operating open, transparent backbones. Another model is that of Stockholm, where the municipal government operates Stockab, a successful, open, transparent backbone.

Stokab investment and return, millions of Swedish Kronor

Looking around the world, there are other possibilities. In Singapore, the government acts as a venture capitalist, investing in Internet service providers.

Of course, Cuba needs connectivity outside of Havana and the world has models for that as well. At least 450 small towns and cities in the US have municipal broadband networks with a variety of ownership and regulation policies -- could Cuba model their success? (Note that the states shown in red on the map below have legal barriers to municipal networks).

Interactive map showing over 450 wholesale and retail municipal networks

India has a much larger rural networking task than Cuba, but Cubans might also study India's national fiber network, which hopes to reach 250,000 rural villages and offer non-discriminatory access to all service providers.

If the Cuban government is serious about making a transition away from ETECSA's current wholesale/retail monopoly, they need to be working on an infrastructure ownership/regulation plan. We have seen a leaked executive summary of an infrastructure plan for the next five years, but it is not focused on future technologies or ownership and regulation policies and it was leaked, not openly developed by multiple stakeholders.

Cuba needs to consider alternative infrastructure ownership and regulation policies if they hope to achieve an affordable, modern Internet. Doing so will take political will and time. The time to start planning is now.

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.

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?

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.

A drop in the Internet bucket -- big news or not?

Adonis Ortiz chats with his father, who lives in the U.S., using a free Wi-Fi network at a center run by famed artist Kcho, in Havana, (Desmond Boylan/Associated Press)

The Cuban artist Kcho received permission from the Cuban telecommunication monopoly ETECSA to provide free WiFi access to his Internet connection.

Cuba has many open WiFi hotspots, but this is different in two ways: it is authorized by the Cuban government and it provides access to the Internet, not the Cuban "intranet."

Users of the hotspot share a single 2mbps ADSL link so it must be slow when only one person is online and very slow when several are sharing the access point. By itself, one slow access point in the nation is essentially meaningless, but might it be the first of many?

I have suggested a number of low cost steps the Cuban government could take immediately if they are willing to open the Internet. For example -- how about rolling out WiFi access to satellite links throughout the nation?

Is this an isolated drop in the bucket or an indicator that ETECSA is willing to open the Internet? I suspect it is the former, but maybe ...

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Update 3/13/2015

This is a photo of young people sharing the DSL link -- with this many users on line at one time, the service must be very slow -- nobody is watching Netflix.

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Update 3/15/2015

Havana Times reported that the connection speed is only 500 kbps, not 2 mbps, the free WiFi connections have been available for nearly 3 months and they have been offering free Internet access at the center library for a year and a half.

Login instructions -- up to 15 simultaneous users

Since this is not a new development, why are they getting publicity now?

Kcho in the news -- why now?

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Update 3/19/2015

Isbel Diaz Torres has written a post describing his experience using Kcho's shared link to the Internet. It is no surprise that it was too slow to be useful. In an hour and a half, the only thing he succeeded in doing was reading tweets. He was unable to post a tweet, use Gmail or Facebook, etc.

Needless to say, he found the experience frustrating and concluded the post saying:

The worst part of this isn’t the bad or non-existent service but the logic behind it. As you can see, access to the Internet isn’t presented as a right but as a hand-out, a gift that this magnate of the arts gives us, through a paternalistic, populist and opportunistic gesture towards those who do not have his privileges.

I am puzzled by this "event." It has garnered a lot of publicity -- I have seen more Google alerts and stories on this "breakthrough" than any event I can recall.

No doubt Kcho and anyone associated with the project knew in advance that the connection would be unusable. Does it have any significance? Why did Kcho do it and why did ETECSA allowed it?

Fidel Castro visits Kcho at the Romerillo Studio in January 2014. Photo: cubadebate.cu

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Update 3/24/2015

As we see in the photo above, Kcho is supportive of and supported by the government of Cuba, yet he says the Cuban government should have no fear of the Internet. He does not fear an Arab-style "Cuban Spring." As he put it "Cuba is not North Africa."

This is reminiscent of the debate between Cuban leaders who feared the Internet in the 1990s and those who argued for embracing it. At that time, Raúl Castro argued against the Internet, stating that "glasnost which undermined the USSR and other socialist countries consisted in handing over the mass media, one by one, to the enemies of socialism."

Will he rectify that mistake?

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Update 4/5/2015

WiFi access to the Internet was authorized and tested at Kcho's studio for a couple of months before they went public with a very successful publicity campaign. This seems to have been a trial balloon for similar WiFi access points and now ETECSA has announced that there will be more beginning in May -- "¡Viene la WiFi! Ahora sí."

I don't know any of the details like -- what it will cost (Kcho's access is free), whether it will be to the Internet or intranet, what the back--haul speed and latency will be, etc. This still feels like a drop in the bucket -- stay tuned.

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Update 4/25/2015

ETECSA has expanded cell coverage and installed a public WiFi spot in in Sancti Spíritus. Unfortunately, they are still focused on SMS and phone calls and the WiFi backhaul is 2 mbps, which they say can be shared by 90 simultaneous users -- unusable.

I understand that this is a short term, interim step, but it is a drop in the bucket. I hope they experiment with other short-term technologies while planning long-term policy and technology.

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Update 5/3/2015

ETECSA will increase the number of Internet access "Cyber Points" from 155 to over 300 by late this year. ETECSA Cyber Point access is slow and expensive -- I would be curious to know who the users are and how they are using it. That would be an interesting survey.

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Update 5/23/2015

New free, public-access WiFi hotspots are coming on line in Trinidad and Sancti Spiritus.

I wonder how many hotspots ETECSA plans to roll out. I am not sure whether these sites offer access to the Internet or the Cuban intranet and I don't know about connection speed and latency either.

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Update 6/3/2015

ETECSA is installing hotspots in Guantánamo and Baracoa. They say they will operate 24 hours a day and handle 50 simultaneous users. One has to wonder what the backhaul speed and radio configuration are if they hope to satisfy that many users. I also wonder whether the undersea cable or satellite will be used for international traffic (if it is available).

If you or someone you know has used one of the new hotspots, please let us know what it was like.

The Internet press hypes Cuban WiFi access

Poster with WiFi announcement at the Technology Center (14ymedio)

While I was on vacation it was widely reported that ETECSA would be providing megabyte (megabit?) per second WiFi Internet access in Santiago de Cuba for $4.50 per hour. ETECSA subsequently issued a clarification, saying they would be providing WiFi access to the Cuban intranet at no cost.

The initial reports were all based on a 3-sentence post on the Web site of the Cuban Journalist's Union.

The rapid spread of this semi-correct story is a product of click-hungry Internet "journalism" -- contrast that with the reporting a few days later by Yosmany Mayeta Labrada on the 14ymedio site. (English translation).

The initial reporting was not only opportunistic -- Cuba has been in the news lately -- it was uncritical. One would expect the Internet Press to recognize that a few WiFi access points with 1 megabyte per second back-haul speed at a cost of $4.50 per hour is neither Big News nor the sign of a major shift in Cuban Internet policy.

This is the same fallacy as in the sad case of Alan Gross. Gross was convicted of bringing equipment into Cuba that, had he succeeded, would have made no significant difference. That project cost the American tax payers millions of dollars and provided the Cuban government with a propaganda "threat" that it has grossly overstated.

Cuba's WiFi crackdown -- substance or theater?

The New Republic blog reported on a crackdown on a 120-user WiFi network in Havana on May 26 and the Miami Herald reported on that crackdown and three others, one of which had 400 users.

When one hears of a "120-400 user network," one might imagine 120-400 simultaneous users downloading files, posting social media content, communicating with each other and, even, maybe, accessing the Internet. But that is unrealistic.

The articles report that these were WiFi mesh networks. I worked on two WiFi mesh networks around ten years ago (see the update, below) and in spite of having fast backhaul to the Internet (by Cuban standards) they were limited in physical range, speed and the ability to serve many simultaneous users.

So, ten years ago, router overhead and link bandwidth severely limited WiFi mesh networks. But, what about today's improved equipment, as used in Cuba? The articles mentioned above say the networks used Ubiquity Nanostation M2 outdoor routers, shown here:

These are much faster and have better antennas and radios than we had ten years ago, but they are WiFi devices, designed for local area networks. I have no experience with the Nanostation M2, but I checked the "most helpful" five-star review on Amazon. The review was written by an installer, who states that "One customer uses them for a bridge covering 300' line of sight ... and gets 150 Mbps throughput, which is fantastic." That is better than the equipment we used ten years ago, but it does not sound like a link in a network in which multiple users are simultaneously downloading the latest episode of their favorite TV show from a PC server or surfing the Web (Cuban or World Wide).

I suspect, though do not know, that the routers are running Commotion, a mesh networking program developed by the New America Foundation with funding from USAID. They have piloted networks in a number of cities but I am not familiar with any reports giving performance and capcity data. If you have used a WiFi mesh network in Cuba, I would love to hear about your experience.

Given the limitations of WiFi and the need to keep antennas out of site, I suspect that Cuban WiFi networks are primarily serving and being used by tech enthusiasts -- like our pre-Internet dial-up bulletin boards. These networks would have a hard time competing with shared flash drives for distributing music, video and software and they do not offer a practical, sharable path to the Internet or the Cuban intranet -- they do not seem to me to pose a political threat.

(We can imagine future mesh networks using very fast cell phones with smart, non-WiFi radios as posing a political threat -- see this speculative paper on a mesh network in North Korea).

If I am correct, why did the government bother to shut these networks down and why is the enforcement somewhat sporadic?

Cracking down on these networks is reminiscent of, though less tragic than, the Alan Gross case in that the government is overstating their threat. Had Alan Gross succeeded, it would have meant little, and, if my speculation about the performance of these mesh networks is accurate, they too have little political or practical importance.

Enforcement also seems to be selective. Several networks were closed down, but people openly advertise WiFi equipment and weekly packets of entertainment and software for sale on the Revolico Web site, for example:

They may have stopped these networks as a PR/propaganda measure -- for internal and external consumption. Perhaps it is just a general slap to intimidate people who are uncertain as to what the rules and regulations really are -- to let them know who is boss. Another possibility is that these networks might be seen as a threat to ETECSA's revenue. It does not seem like much today, but one could imagine mesh networks as one day impacting ETECSA's bottom line.

It seems that issue of WiFi networks was included as part of a discussion at a forum in Havana earlier this week. Were you there?
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Update June 24, 2014

I have had off-the-record conversations about these WiFi hotspots with people in Cuba since writing this post. They say there are many such networks -- possibly in every large or medium size city in Cuba -- and the networks are not political. There are unwritten rules against political discussion and a member could be banned for breaking them. They say the major uses are sharing programs, songs and videos and playing games.

This tends to confirm my suspicion that these are more like hobbyist bulletin boards than a political threat and still leaves me speculating about the motive is for closing some of them.

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Two WiFi mesh networks -- ten years ago

This university housing network was a class project connecting 22 small apartment buildings to 100 Mbps backhaul links (in the red buildings). The three buildings on the lower left were unable to connect to the backhaul points, so we installed a two-hop mesh to extend the network to them. The addition of a single hop added significant latency and we could not have realistically gone further. 

Around the same time, I worked on a public-access WiFi mesh network with a radius of around 2,000 feed for laptops with external antennas in downtown Hermosa Beach, California. The meshed computers shared a 6 Mbps backhaul link, as shown here, the traffic was spiky, but spikes saturated this link at times.

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Update 11/21/2014

A friend forwarded me a link to a story on another crackdown on a Cuban WiFi network. Five men were arrested and their equipment confiscated.

As we see above, this and similar networks do not pose a political threat and, indeed, the charges against the five were not political, but economic -- the arrests were the result of a complaint by Cuban State Radio and the men were charged with illegal economic activity.

This sounds like a desire to protect an economic monopoly and it reminds me of the efforts of Internet service providers in the United States lobbying for state laws that prohibit local governments from offering broadband service.

Tom Wheeler, Chairman of the US Federal Communications Commission, has said he would seek to invalidate those laws. Perhaps small WiFi networks like this (and "sneaker nets") should be considered legitimate small businesses and encouraged as part of the Cuban Small Business Initiative.

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Update 2/8/2015

Ted Henken found an article describing Street Net (SNET), a large WiFi network in Havana.

The post describes the network and its uses (a lot of gaming) and gives a list of 14 rules of membership, including:

• Don't speak of politics or religion.
• Don't post illegal material like pornography or television programs.
• Don't charge for services offered on the network.

Evidently the restrictions they place on users are sufficient to keep the government from closing them down -- they are far from secret. It is interesting to note that they seem to have banned the posting of copyrighted material while weekly information "packages" publish TV shows, movies, magazines, etc. I've read the hypotheses that the weekly packages are distributed by the government -- perhaps SNET is staying out of their territory.

I also skimmed the comments. One said -- perhaps half seriously and half gallows humor -- that it was a good article and he hoped the network would not mysteriously disappear after it was published. The author replied that he was not worried because the network was well known and would have been closed down long ago if it bothered the government.