Cuba's new WiFi regulations -- a step forward, backward or sideways?

Cuba has legalized WiFi access to public Internet hotspots from nearby homes and small businesses, but SNET and other community networks remain illegal under the new regulations. Does this signify a significant policy change?

Soon after Cuba's state monopoly telecommunication company ETECSA began rolling out WiFi hotspots for Internet access, people began linking to them from homes and community street nets. These connections and importing the WiFi equipment they used were illegal, but generally tolerated as long as they remained apolitical and avoided pornography. Regulations passed last month legalized some of this activity in a bid to boost connectivity by allowing Internet access from homes and small private businesses like restaurants and vacation rentals that are located close enough to a hotspot to establish a WiFi connection.

The added convenience may generate more revenue for ETECSA and it will give the Ministry of Communication (MINCOM) some small fees and, more important, registration data on the local-area network operators. (If you license a connection, you have the power to rescind the license). It will also generate some additional network traffic, which may strain network capacity. There are two WiFi frequency bands -- 2.4 and 5 Ghz -- and a friend told me that currently only the 2.4 Ghz band is being used. The new regulations allow use of the 5 Ghz band as well, which will add capacity from homes and businesses to the hotspots, but backhaul capacity from the hotspots to the Internet may become more of a bottleneck and exacerbate quality of service problems.

So much for small networks, but what, if anything, will be the impact of these regulations and their enforcement be on larger, community networks, the largest of which is Havana's SNET? The new regulations bar cables that cross streets and radio transmitter power over 100 mW. SNET uses cables and higher-powered transmitters, so, if these regulations were enforced, they would put SNET and smaller community networks out of business.

However, community networks have been illegal and tolerated since their inception, so it may be that they will continue to be ignored. If that is the case, the new regulations don't really change the status quo, but what if these new regulations foreshadow a policy change? What if ETECSA were willing to collaborate with community networks following the example of Guifi.net in Spain?

SNET topology. Red dots are pillars;
others are second-level nodes (source).

If that were the case, ETECSA could take steps like providing high-speed wireless or fiber Internet connections at the locations of the central SNET backbone "pillars" and allowing cables and faster wireless links to and within second-level networks that serve up to 200 users. They could also cooperate with SNET administrators in purchasing supplies and equipment and network management and they could do the same for smaller community networks outside of Havana.

So, which is it -- a step backward with cracking down on SNET and other community networks, a slightly positive step adding locations from which one can access a WiFi hotspot, or a positive indication of a policy change and a step toward incorporating community networks into the recognized and supported Cuban Internet infrastructure?

We will know the answer after the new rules go into effect on July 29, but my guess is that it will be the middle choice, a slightly positive step. Cracking down on SNET would be disruptive -- eliminating jobs and depriving thousands of users of services they value and I don't think the government would want those problems. At the other extreme, full cooperation with community networks would mean ETECSA giving up control and the dilution of their bureaucratic and financial monopoly, which seems unlikely.

But, to end on a more upbeat note -- a friend tells me that he has heard that SNET community representatives are talking with the government. Could ETECSA and MINCOM have different views and, if so, who is in charge?

Update 6/15/2019

Two things. First, the friend I mentioned above commented on my speculation that MINCOM and ETECSA might have different views, saying "ETECSA and MINCOM are so tight together that is hard to say where one starts and the other one begins."

He also pointed out that the administrators of four of the SNET sub-nets posted a statement telling users to remain respectful and calm while they negotiate with MINCOM to protect the interest of SNET and other community networks. They have had one meeting in which they talked about spectrum and the statement refers to the "regulatory framework," suggesting that MINCOM is open to high-speed wireless links. They say the first meeting was productive and they will have future meetings.

This increases my confidence that SNET will survive under these new regulations and, if MINCOM allows high-speed links between the sub-nets, SNET performance will improve. It would be even better if the talks go beyond SNET's survival and move on to ways they can collaborate with ETECSA.

You can follow the negotiation progress on the SNET Facebook page.

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.

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.

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.