“Hugo and Fidel are now friends”

Cuba is getting really serious about the Internet: according to a report in CommsDay, a site that tracks telecom news, the plan to link the revolutionary island with Venezuela via an undersea fibre-optic cable, first announced in 2007, is finally being turned into reality. This will enable Cubans – at least, in theory – to ...

Cuba is getting really serious about the Internet: according to a report in CommsDay, a site that tracks telecom news, the plan to link the revolutionary island with Venezuela via an undersea fibre-optic cable, first announced in 2007, is finally being turned into reality. This will enable Cubans - at least, in theory - to enjoy cheaper and faster Internet access; currently, the island has to rely on satellite bandwidth to connect to the Internet.

Cuba is getting really serious about the Internet: according to a report in CommsDay, a site that tracks telecom news, the plan to link the revolutionary island with Venezuela via an undersea fibre-optic cable, first announced in 2007, is finally being turned into reality. This will enable Cubans – at least, in theory – to enjoy cheaper and faster Internet access; currently, the island has to rely on satellite bandwidth to connect to the Internet.

It’s expected that the 1,500km link La Guaira, Vargas state, in northern Venezuela to Siboney in the eastern province of Santiago de Cuba will provide 640Gbps of capacity between the two countries and will be operational by 2010. According to earlier reports, it would also support 20 million simultaneous voice calls. This may explain Cuba’s recent decision to ban VoIP calls abroad: the growing availability of tools like Skype might undermine the profitability of the new cable enterprise.

Evgeny Morozov is a fellow at the Open Society Institute and sits on the board of OSI's Information Program. He writes the Net Effect blog on ForeignPolicy.com

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