What became of the ARCOS undersea cable connection to Cuba?

Will Trump kill the proposal before the election?

Proposed 56km link between the
ARCOS undersea Cable and Cuba

Cuba's primary connection to the global Internet is through the ALBA-1 undersea cable linking landing points on the south-east shore of the island to Venezuela and Jamaica; however, the bulk of Cuban traffic originates in Havana which is on the north-west coast. Traffic from Havana and other cities in the west travels over a backbone to reach the cable landing points. A landing point near Havana would reduce the load on the backbone, speeding connections, providing redundancy, and saving capital investment.

At one time, there seemed to be bipartisan support in the US for improving Cuban Internet access. During his second term, President Obama pursued detente with Cuba and much of that effort was focused on the role of the Internet and undersea cable connectivity was part of the plan. Daniel Sepulveda, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State and U.S. Coordinator for International Communications and Information Policy, who led two US government delegations to Cuba during the Obama administration, said there were at least a half-dozen proposals — from US and non-US companies — to construct a north-south undersea cable between the US and Cuba. There had even been discussion of one day allowing Cuban access to the US cable at Guantanamo, GTMO-1.

At first, Trump seemed to agree -- consider the following timeline:

• October 20, 2017, The State Department issued National Security Presidential Memorandum, NSPM-5, stating that it was our policy to "Amplify efforts to support the Cuban people through the expansion of internet services" and directing government departments and agencies "to examine the technological challenges and opportunities for expanding internet access in Cuba."
• January 22, 2018, The State Department established a Cuba Internet Task Force "to examine technological challenges and opportunities for expanding internet access in Cuba." (Disclosure -- The Task Force formed two sub-committees and I was a member of both).
• July 23, 2018, The consortium that owns the ARCOS cable applied to construct a branch from the cable to an ETECSA supplied cable landing spot in Cojimar, Cuba.
• August 10, 2018, The FCC found the application "to be acceptable for filing and subject to the streamlined processing procedures" obligating them to take action "within forty-five (45) days" unless upon "further examination" the application is "deemed ineligible for streamlined processing."

Well, it seems the application must have been deemed ineligible since as far as I know nothing happened until earlier this month when The Committee for the Assessment of Foreign Participation in the United States Telecommunications Services Sector (CAFPUSTSS), which Trump established in an executive order on April 4, 2020, notified the FCC that it is planning to conduct 120-day security reviews of the ARCOS application.

I reached out to the FCC and the attorney who filed the request for the cable branch to ask why the application had not been acted upon but got no reply. I can think of two possible explanations:

• Trump changed his policy with respect to Cuban Internet connectivity without, as far as I know, telling anyone.
• Trump held this application up in order to grab a Florida headline between now and the election when the CAFPUSTSS rejects the application showing how tough he is on Cuba in an effort to win Cuban and Venezuelan votes.

I'm unfamiliar with FCC procedures and workflow -- is there another explanation?

Finally, note that on March 15, 2018, Deep Blue Cable Inc. applied for a Caribbean cable with 19 landing points. While none of those were in Cuba, they planned a second phase with two Cuban landing points, but the Deep Blue application was withdrawn on November 11, 2019.

Update 11/30/2020

Denise Coca, FCC Division Chief, informed me that the ARCOS-1 application had been withdrawn on October 20, 2020, about two weeks before the election. When asked why the FCC had taken so long to process the application, she did not answer.

I wonder whether this might be re-submitted to the Biden FCC. Since the administration sought Cuban rapprochement during his time as Vice President, I imagine Biden would favor the link. One can argue that doing so would be a net political win among Florida voters. Would Cuban president Díaz-Canel approve it? It would reduce traffic on the Cuban backbone and improve international connectivity, but might be construed as a security threat and neutralize one of his complaints against the US.

Google and ETECSA will agree to exchange Internet traffic without charge

This agreement telegraphs a change in Cuban policy -- now we need the cable.

Google and ETECSA have signed a memorandum of understanding agreeing to negotiate a peering agreement that would allow cost-free data exchange between their networks once an undersea cable physically connects them.

Google has worked hard to establish a relationship with ETECSA and the Cuban government. In recent years, Cuba, not the US, has limited the Cuban Internet. This agreement telegraphs a change in Cuban policy.

Today, nearly all of Cuba's Internet traffic is carried over an undersea cable at the south end of the island. A cable from the Havana area to Florida would reduce the load on their inter-city "backbone" network that today carries Internet traffic to the cable landing in the south. That would result in a faster Internet and save ETECSA money. The next generation of low-earth and medium-earth orbit satellite connectivity can have a similar effect.

ETECSA could use the savings from an undersea cable or next-generation satellites to cut prices, increase investment in infrastructure or increase profit. That would depend upon who is actually calling the shots at ETECSA.

Over three years ago, Daniel Sepulveda, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State and U.S. Coordinator for International Communications and Information Policy, said he knew of at least a half dozen proposals — from US and non-US companies — to construct a north-south undersea cable between the US and Cuba.

The cable has been stopped by politics, not economics or technical difficulty. It looks like Cuba is willing to relent on the politics. Trump's fighting this cable would solidify Cuba's political and commercial ties with China and Russia.

Guantánamo is in the news, but not the undersea cable to Guantánamo

It’s going to be for the entire island in anticipation that one day that they’ll be able to extend it into mainland Cuba.
Ronald Bechtold, ex-CIO, office of the Secretary of Defense

Guantánamo has been in the news lately -- not because of the prisoners held there, but because Raúl Castro insists that it be returned to Cuba. The controversy is over the 45 square mile base, but I have not seen mention of the undersea cable connecting Guantánamo to an unspecified location in Florida.

The estimated completion date for the cable is December 2015 and it could become a bargaining chip in US-Cuba negotiations.

No technical details have been released, but Ronald Bechtold, who was chief information officer at the Secretary of Defense’s office described the cable as a “gigantic bundle” saying “It’s going to be for the entire island in anticipation that one day that they’ll be able to extend it into mainland Cuba.”

Bechtold's comments were denied by Army Colonel Greg Julian, saying “There is no plan for the Southcom to provide fiber-optic communications support to mainland Cuba." He said the project goal is to improve communications for the workers statinoned at Guantánamo. Julian spoke strongly -- he was quoted as saying "[Bechtold] was out of his mind. He is no longer working for the Department of Defense.”

Bechtold was a civilian employee of the Defense Department at the time he made the statement and was scheduled to retire.

Colonel Julian said there was no plan to extend the cable, but plans can change. I've not found subsequent references to this cable or its current status (using Google), but it could be a significant addition to Cuban internet infrastructure if they are sincere about increased access.

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Update 9/7/2015

The Miami Herald reports that the undersea cable is expected to begin operation in February, 2016 (Paywall). It will land in Dania Beach, just south of Fort Lauderdale and connect to Verizon's network access point in Miami.

Last month, I had a chance to ask a senior State Department official concerned with Cuba whether there had been any discussion of the Guantánamo cable in US negotiations with Cuba and he said there had been none.

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Update 10/3/2015

Slate has published a post summarizing the history of the cable and speculating on possible ways it may be used in the future.

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Update 7/5/2016

The US Department of Defense has requested bids on an undersea cable from Guantánamo to Puerto Rico. The price tag? They are justifying it as a backup in case of a break in the fiber linking the base with Florida. They had no comment when asked about the capacity and performance of the current cable. On the face of it, this seems like overkill.

Cuba-Jamaica link of the undersea cable is operational

Doug Madory of Renesys reports that the Cuba-Jamaica link of the ALBA-1 cable is carrying Cable and Wireless (C&W) traffic.

The first plot shows Transit, a Renesys-defined metric which is a function of several variables and may be interpreted as a surrogate for total capacity.  As you see, the orange area, indicating C&W capacity, starts May 13.

The traceroute data shown in the second plot is generated by 100 machines located around the world, which run traceroutes to approximately 1.5 million targets daily.  The plot shows the number of successful traceroutes, and, eyballing the data, it looks like about 1/8 of the traffic went over the Jamaican link.

Note that both plots show a sharp drop for Telefonica's cable service.  Again, just eyeballing the data, it looks like there may actually be a decrease in total cable utilization versus satellite.

I asked Doug whether he thought that might have been due to a policy decision or just the result of an automated configuration algorithm, but he could not say.

I guess time will tell.  It also remains to be seen whether this change has any impact upon those using the Internet in Cuba or those trying to reach Cuba from the rest of the world.

Online education -- an application for the ALBA-1 undersea cable

When the Internet was getting started in Cuba, there was a high level debate on whether to welcome or fear it. They faced the dictator's dilemma -- whether economic and cultural value of the Internet justified the political risk. Finance Minister Carlos Lage, said "yes" and Raúl Castro said "no." Raúl won.

In arguing for the Internet, Lage spoke of its economic value, comparing the cost of a telex to that of an email. He was correct, but the cost to the economy may not have been as important as the cost to the education system.

This point was brought home a year ago by Greg Sowa, a medical student from the US, who is studying in Cuba. Sowa described Cuban student access in a blog post:

Most students use their limited internet access at the school (forty minutes a week for each student, depending if you can talk your way in for some extra time) for communication. We furiously upload email attachments of letters home while copying and pasting messages from our inbox into microsoft word documents to read later, off the clock.

Compare that to a US medical student who has near-instant access to over 21 million citations for biomedical literature from PubMed, Web sites of professional societies, the National Institutes of Health, professional social networking, Google and Google Scholar, etc.

The ALBA-1 cable could help close this gap.

We have been discussing the cable lately, and it appears that it is not yet providing Internet connectivity to Cubans, but it is being tested and used used to operate the Venezuelan ID system. Writers like Yoani Sanchez attribute the lack of cable connectivity to political fear, and they may be correct, but, even if the government wanted wide-spread access, the domestic infrastructure to support it is not in place and Cuba cannot afford it. The cable may be operating, but there is little modern "middle mile" and "last mile" infrastructure.

Since Cuba cannot afford general high-speed connectivity, they must use the cable selectively, and higher education would be a good place to begin. Students like Greg Sowa would obviously benefit, but so would faculty. Furthermore, education could be a source of revenue.

INFOMED, 2006

The online education market is taking off, and universities, non-profits, private companies and venture capitalists are vying for a place in that new, global marketplace.

There is considerable diversity among the offerings and the student goals, but, the majority of current offerings are in English, leaving an opportunity for Spanish language material. Cuba could be in a good position to satisfy that need. For example, Cuba has considerable medical expertise. If they upgraded the Infomed network and connected it to the cable, they could offer medical education in Spanish and tailored to the needs of Latin America and the Caribbean.

My own university provides an example of the sort of thing that could be done. We offer a state-wide nursing program online. The program is successful and has been running for several years. Cuba could be in a postion to do something similar (perhaps even in collaboration with our nursing program).

Computer science is another promising area. The most visible and largest online classes to date have been in computer science. Elite schools like Stanford, MIT and the Indian Institutes of Technology are going online. Cuba has a specialized University of Informatics Science (UCI). Could UCI not do the same?

Cuba cannot afford to connect everyone on the island, and would not want to if they could. This sort of focus -- where Cuban expertise is applied toward a postive social goal that also generates revenue -- may be a way to bootstrap Cuba's entry into the Internet era.

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Update 11/7/2013

Writing in The Havana Times, Alfredo Fernandez, a Cuban who is now in Ecuador, asks "why are there no Cuban academic videos on the Internet?" (http://bit.ly/1bcXvgb)

He goes on to say:

After a simple study based on everyday observations, I am quite surprised that, in the six months I have been searching for materials on YouTube – about subjects as broad-ranging as literature, philosophy, journalism, film and many others – I have not once come upon a single Cuban video.

Limited pilot testing of the ALBA-1 cable?

Muchas Gracias sent us a link to an article in which Jorge Arreaza, Venezuelan minister of Science and Technology says the cable is operational, but not saying what it was being used for (http://www.diariodecuba.com/cuba/11252-venezuela-asegura-que-el-cable-de-internet-esta-absolutamente-operativo).

I have also heard an unconfirmed report that the cable is operational and being used in some Venezuelan government offices to access databases they have stored in Cuba. That could be a pilot test for the ALBA-1 link.

That would be consistent with the Renesys data we just posted (http://laredcubana.blogspot.com/2012/05/hard-data-on-idle-alba-1-undersea-cable.html), but it would not be Internet connectivity.

Venezuela storing their data in Cuba reminds me of the International Center for Scientific and Technical Information in Moscow (http://www.icsti.su/portal/eng/index.php). During the pre-Internet days, they provided centralized database access for all of the communist nations. Today they are on the Internet, serving a different group of nations.

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Update 7/17/2013

I just came across this 2011 article may have been the source of the rumor that early tests of the undersea cable were in support of database applications Cuba runs for the Venezuelan government. The article asserts that Albet Engineering and Systems, Inc. runs the citizen ID application for the government of Venezuela, raising concern of election fraud and other secret manipulation.

It also draws attention to the link between Albet and the University of Information Sciences (UCI). Albet owns the commercial rights to all products and services offered by the UCI -- they seem to be the marketing arm for the applications that UCI students and faculty develop. (We discussed UCI in some detail in a 2011 report. They emphasize practical work on projects -- making students a source of low-cost labor for Albet).

I just found this old article -- has there been more on this story or other Albet/UCI projects?

Hard data on the idle ALBA-1 undersea cable

I received an email today from Doug Madory of Renesys, a company that monitors the dynamic state of the global Internet.

Madory wrote that there is no evidence of a submarine cable in use in Cuba in 2012. He said that latencies to Cuba are very stable and clearly satellite (>480 ms).  He attached the following visualizations (click to enlarge):

The numbers in the figure legends indicate the connecting autonomous networks -- CubaData (11960) is the state telecom of Cuba, and they have three satellite providers Tata (6453), Intelsat (22351) and NewCom (32034).

Renesys is "The Internet Intelligence Authority" -- they constantly monitor the state of the global Internet. You may have seen their reports of network outages when nations went off line during the Arab Spring, for example, this Syrian episode. You can get a sense of what they do by following their blog and Internet events bulletin.

What happened to the ALBA-1 undersea cable?

(AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos, File)

Associated Press reporter Andrea Rodgriguez, @ARodriguezAP, has published an article stating that "mystery shrouds the fate" of the ALBA-1 undersea cable linking Venezuela and Cuba.

Cuban officials promised that the cable would in use last fall, but Rodriguez finds no evidence that it is use in government offices or elsewhere.  She interviewed a dozen employees of public institutions who said they have seen no noticeable improvement in their work connections.  Some said that download speeds have even gotten a little slower.  She also made "multiple attempts to get Cuban and Venezuelan government officials to comment," but was unsuccessful.

She is a reporter who is on the ground in Cuba and unable to find evidence of the deployment or application of the cable.

How might we explain this?  I can think of three hypotheses:

1. There have been claims of corruption, and some of the peple Rodgriguez interviewed corroborate that assertion.
2. I have suggested earlier that a fast undersea cable would be a strong link in a weak (or nonexistent) chain if Cuba's domestic Internet infrastructure were not upgraded to utilize it.  Skilled networking technicians would also be needed.  Perhaps capital to upgrade the domestic network is not available.
3. The Arab Spring may have frightened the government.   Raúl Castro opposed the Internet when Cuba connected in the mid-1990s.  In October 1997 he stated that "Glasnost, which undermined the USSR and other socialist countries, consisted of handing over the mass media, one by one, to the enemies of socialism." Perhaps he fears an Internet supported "Cuban Spring."

Or, maybe the answer is none of the above -- or all of the above.  Whatever the reason, it seems that a reported 70 million dollar investment is gathering barnacles and little more.

Is Ms. Rodgriguez wrong?  Does anyone have evidence of the cable being in operation?  I would love to hear about it and, even better, run a few pings and traceroutes.

ALBA-1 environmental impact assessment

A comment on an earlier post points to an environmental impact study of the Cuba-Jamaica segment of the ALBA-1 undersea cable:

1. Executive Summary
   
2. Project Description
   
3. Analysis of Alternatives
   
4. Policy, Legislative & Regulatory Framework
   
5. Description of Bio-Physical Environment
   
6. Socio-Cultural & Socio-Economic Environment
   
7. Determination of Potential Impacts
   
8. Outline Environmental Management & Monitoring Plans
   
9. References
   

The report is surprisingly (to me) detailed.

Since the report was commissioned by the National Environment and Planning Agency of Jamaica, it focuses on Jamaica and and the Jamaican landing point.

Is there a similar document from Cuba?

Also, if you are a cable geek (even a little bit of one) and you have not seen them, check out Telegeography's interactive submarine cable map Neal Stephenson's description of the FLAG cable and the book by Arthur C. Clarke, which are described here.

NPR: In Cuba, Dial-Up Internet Is A Luxury

NPR aired a five minute segment by correspondent Nick Miroff on the state of the Cuban Internet.

Miroff portrays Internet access as expensive and limited, as illustrated by this photo of Cubans waiting to get online at a Havana cybercafe. He also points out the irony of Cubans carrying smart phones that can only be used for texting and voice calls and a Cuban TV presentation on Facebook and Twitter, which are unavailable to all but a tiny portion of the population.

Miroff also mentions Cuban's disappointment that the ALBA cable has had no discernible effect, citing swirling rumors of technical problems, bad business deals, or political fear flamed by the role of social media in the Arab Spring -- the dictator's dilemma again.

You can listen to the segment or read a transcript on the NRP Web site.

What's happening with the cable?

The last news I heard of the ALBA-1 cable was in August, when it was announced that it would begin operation in September or October.

I was waiting till the end of the month to ask about the cable, but the Havana Times recently published an editorial asking "who ate the cable?" They imply that the cable has been delayed or perhaps even stopped by graft and allude to Ramiro Valdés' statement comparing the Internet to “a wild horse yet to be tamed.”

Can anyone supply us with an update on the cable?

Video of ASCE presentation

I was traveling this week and could not attend the annual meeting of the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy, but we were able to arrange a remote presentation. You can see a video of the 21 minute presentation on the Past, Present and Future of the Internet in Cuba.

Jeremiah Woolsey also gave a version of the talk at the UCLA Business Information Technology Conference.

Alba-1 cable to begin service in September or October

A blog post by Isbel Díaz Torres quotes Boris Moreno Cordoves, Vice Minister of Communications & Informatics, as saying that service improvement due to the ALBA-1 cable could begin in September or October of this year.

Díaz asks, what will begin to change at that time -- Internet access? prices? performance? telephony?

He mentions a 2008 workshop where Cuba's strategy was stated as "orderly and intensive social use of the media and connectivity." One would expect that since that time or earlier, Cuba had been planning and preparing for the arrival of the undersea cable. Installation of access and backbone network equipment must be well under way. Technicians must have been trained, service providers prepared, etc.

Díaz has looked for evidence of such planning and activity, and concludes that "It’s been almost three years and yet they still don't seem prepared." After researching the question, Díaz produces nothing but vague quotes by officials suggesting that he may be right -- that they are not prepared.

Can that be?

Committee to Protect Journalists report on Cuba

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has just released a special report called After the Black Spring, Cuba's New Repression by Karen Phillips. The title refers to the recent release of the last of 29 journalists who were jailed in 2003.

The CPJ examined government activities in March and April 2011, two months with sensitive political milestones, and found that critical journalists were targeted in more than 50 instances of repression -- arbitrary arrests, short-term detentions, beatings, smear campaigns, surveillance, and social sanctions. The government strategy seems to have shifted from long jail sentences to frequent, low-profile harassment.

Much of the focus is on bloggers and Twitter users. According to the CPJ, there are about 40 critical bloggers and "the struggle for free expression is being waged almost exclusively in digital media." They go on to state that "the government proudly announced in February that it had enlisted roughly 1,000 bloggers to denounce critical journalists," but did not offer a reference to that announcement.

They predict that the ALBA undersea cable will disadvantage the critical bloggers who have to scramble for Internet access illegally, visibly at embassies and Internet cafes or at expensive hotels. Journalists outside of Havana, with few hotels and no embassies, are at an even greater disadvantage. The cable will improve the already free access enjoyed by the official government bloggers.

The report concludes with lists of specific recommendations for the Cuban government, international community, U.N. Human Rights Council, European Union, Organization of American States, technology and blogging community and U.S. government.

The CPJ states that they have reports of 50 sanctions during a two month period and presents a number of annecdotes to support the claim. It would be interesting to conduct a survey of the independent Cuban bloggers to ascertain the frequency and types of harassment they have experienced.

Finally, this report may seem one-sided to some who feel that Cuba has no choice but to engage in such practices because of US attempts to influence Cuban public opinion, so called "cyberwar." There is no doubt that many reports and committees on Cuba are blindly one-sided, seeing the situation in stark black/white terms. But, this report is lent credibility by the fact that the CPJ is not a Cuban interest group -- they are interested in protecting journalists globally. They are an equal opportunity critic of repression wherever they encounter it.

The Internet route from Cuba to Google

The Internet is, as its name implies, a network of networks. A data packet is sent from a particular computer on one network across the Internet to the receiving computer on another network. As the packet moves from network to network, it goes through special purpose computers called routers.

Traceroute is a simple utility program that comes with every Mac or Windows computer. It shows the path a packet takes -- the list of routers that handle it -- as it hops from network to network.

A colleague in Cuba recently ran Traceroute to see the path between his computer, which was on a dial-up link, to Google in California. He saw that the packet hopped through 20 routers:

1. 192.168.254.69
2. 192.168.254.65
3. 192.168.254.77
4. 192.168.254.229
5. 200.0.16.130
6. 200.0.16.114
7. 200.0.16.101
8. 204.14.41.33
9. 204.14.40.9
10. 207.45.197.197
11. 64.86.83.190
12. 64.86.138.114
13. 66.198.111.65
14. 216.6.87.9
15. 74.125.50.230
16. 216.239.46.248
17. 209.85.248.73
18. 209.85.254.235
19. 216.239.46.78
20. 74.125.93.99

These four-number addresses, called Internet Protocol (IP) addresses, identify each router on the path between Cuba and Google, and they reveal something of the network structure.

The prefix of the first four hops (192.168) indicates that they are within the ISP's local area network. The next three are on the network of ETECSA, the Cuban telecommunication monopoly. I saw that by querying the "whois" database that shows that the IP addresses that begin "200.0" have been allocated to:

owner: CUBADATA
responsible: Rafael López Guerra
address: Ave. Independencia y 19 Mayo, s/n,
address: 10600 - La Habana - CH
country: CU
phone: +53 7 574242
e-mail: nap@ETECSA.CU

The eighth hop is over a satellite link from the router at the edge of the Cuban network to the network of Newcome International in Miami. I know it is a satellite link because Traceroute reported that the time to reach from Cuba to the 8th router was much longer than from Cuba to the 7th router. Newcome routes packets across their network from Miami to Newark New Jersey and eventually to Google.

No secrets are revealed here -- this sort of information is widely available -- but it would be interesting to see how routes and timing (which we looked at in a previous post) change when the undersea cable is operational. If you are in Cuba and would like to share this sort of route and timing data, let me know.

Ping time from Cuba to the US

Ping is a simple utility program that comes with every Mac or Windows computer. Ping records the time it takes to send a data packet across the Internet and to receive an acknowledgement of receipt from the remote computer. A colleague in Cuba recently ran a ping test from his computer, which was on a dial-up link, to Google in California. The results were:

Pinging www.l.google.com [74.125.93.104] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 74.125.93.104: bytes=32 time=701ms
Reply from 74.125.93.104: bytes=32 time=751ms
Reply from 74.125.93.104: bytes=32 time=707ms
Reply from 74.125.93.104: bytes=32 time=683ms

His computer sent four 32-byte packets to the Google computer with the Internet protocol address 74.125.93.104. When the computer at Google received each packet, it sent back an acknowledgment, and the computer in Cuba recorded the time it took from sending the packet to receipt of the acknowledgement.

In this case, the first packet took 701 milliseconds, and the other three 751, 707, and 683 milliseconds respectively. The average of the four was 710 milliseconds.

Well, 710 milliseconds is only 7/10s of a second, which sounds pretty fast for a 5,100 mile round trip, but it is too slow to support many applications. For example, you would not be able to carry on a conversation using Skype. The length of the ping times and their variability (from 683 to 751 milliseconds) would make conversation impossible. Web surfing would also be very slow because modern Web pages do not come all at once -- they require many separate connections to get all the words, pictures, audio and video as well as behind-the-scenes links to computers that track your actions and insert ads.

The majority of the Ping time was due to the slow satellite connection between Cuba and the outside world. What about the time to reach another computer within Cuba? My Cuban colleague pinged a computer that was on the same ISP local area network as his:

Pinging ved-as-2.enet.cu [192.168.254.69] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 192.168.254.69: bytes=32 time=112ms
Reply from 192.168.254.69: bytes=32 time=126ms
Reply from 192.168.254.69: bytes=32 time=101ms
Reply from 192.168.254.69: bytes=32 time=103ms

The average time has been reduced to 110 milliseconds, but the variability remains high. This speed would support a Skype call and, since Cuban Web pages are on the average much simpler than elsewhere, Web surfing within Cuba would be much less frustrating than international surfing. However, the dial-up link to the ISP, coupled with relatively slow equipment in the ISP network, leaves speeds far short of those in many nations.

For example, I pinged Google from my home in Los Angeles:

Pinging www.l.google.com [74.125.224.84] with 32 data bytes:
Reply from 74.125.224.84: bytes=32 time=18ms
Reply from 74.125.224.84: bytes=32 time=17ms
Reply from 74.125.224.84: bytes=32 time=19ms
Reply from 74.125.224.84: bytes=32 time=17ms

The average time is 17 milliseconds and there is only 2 millisecond difference between the slowest and fastest transmission. This connection is fast enough for viewing complex Web pages and phone chats.

The bottom line is that since the Internet in Cuba is slower than the US, Cuban applications are less varied and sophisticated. (Don't let that go to your head if you are in the US because other nations have still higher speeds, enabling them to develop and deploy more sophisticated applications than we do. For more along those lines see these posts).

Will the situation change when the undersea cable between Cuba and Venezuela is operational? If your ISP or organization network is not connected to the cable nothing will change. Whether or not you can connect, is both a political and an economic question.

If you are allowed to connect through the cable, expect about 600 milliseconds to be cut out of that Ping time to Google. That will be good news, but, if you are connected using the current dial-up, ISDN or slow DSL infrastructure, you will still be significantly worse off than I am in Los Angeles.

Will China be helping with domestic Internet infrastructure?

As discussed in a previous post, China has played a major role in financing and installing the undersea cable between Venezuela and Cuba, but there has been little discussion of complementary domestic infrastructure needed to reach beyond the cable landing point.

Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping (shown here with Raul Castro) is leaving Cuba today after a three-day visit, where he announced a commitment to accelerate fast-growing economic relations between the two nations and committed to an estimated $6 billion investment in oil and natural gas.

The energy agreement was the big news, but, according to China Daily, there were also agreements on "cooperation" in other areas including digital television and telecommunications. There were no details, but perhaps these agreements will provide financing for the domestic infrastructure required to exploit the undersea cable.

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

Commemorating 50 years of Cuba-China relations

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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