U.S. Sets a Goal in Cuba: Open Internet
 By Kejal Vyas
The Wall Street Journal 
Jan. 20, 2015 

Telecommunications Looms as a Top Issue, as the Top American Diplomat for Latin America Arrives to Havana on Wednesday to Negotiate Terms of a Detente Between Two Cold War Foes
 
HAVANA—Cuba’s regime, which has curbed the Internet to help prevent any popular uprising, faces a new challenge to its policy: U.S. diplomacy.

On Wednesday, when the U.S. State Department’s top diplomat for the hemisphere, Roberta Jacobson, arrives here to negotiate terms of the détente announced by the Cold War foes a month ago, she will lay the path to a potential new era in connectivity for the region’s least-wired nation.

Promoting Internet access for Cubans is a top priority for Washington, where last week the Obama administration began to permit commercial shipments of devices like mobile phones and laptops, as well as related software and hardware.

A senior U.S. official said that American negotiators didn’t expect any breakthroughs in the first round of talks, which are set to focus on the details of establishing formal embassies in both countries. But the rapprochement is raising hopes of a freer Internet on the Caribbean island.

“If there’s one sentence that can sum up what young Cubans want, it’s that they want to feel like they are normal citizens in the 21st century,” said Raúl Moas, executive director at a Miami-based nonprofit group Roots of Hope, which has sent cellphones, laptops and tablets to the island since the Cuban government legalized those devices for personal use in 2008.

For more than half a century, the Castro brothers’ totalitarian regime has restricted telecommunications and the media, helping it to weather dire economic conditions and a U.S. trade embargo that might have otherwise led to open revolt. Only Iran, Syria and China had less Internet freedom, says a recent study by Washington-based advocacy group Freedom House.

Cuba’s National Statistics Office says one in four people uses the Internet. But Freedom House estimates a mere 5% of the country has unrestricted Internet access, with the rest directed to a state-controlled intranet offering educational sites such as a Cuban encyclopedia and email.

But there are signs that even the government recognizes that its policies are putting the island’s highly educated populace at a disadvantage.

A Dec. 10 article in state newspaper Granma, the official Communist Party publication, cited students at a forum voicing their frustration over the digital divide they face with the rest of the world and Deputy Communications Minister Wilfredo González lamenting Cuba’s ranking of 153 out of 157 countries in terms of telecom infrastructure.

“There isn’t any restriction against amplifying Internet access and as soon as the economic possibilities permit, we will amplify” to homes, Mr. González said.

Despite hopes surrounding Cuba’s Internet future, state-telecom company Etecsa offered a reminder on Jan. 12 that change here comes slowly. Days after Cuba’s Union of Journalists reported that wireless Internet service would begin in the second-largest city of Santiago de Cuba by the end of January, Etecsa put out a statement clarifying that it would allow only intranet connections.

For now, home Internet service is reserved for state officials and foreigners, while most Cubans turn to government offices, hotels, some businesses and more than 100 government-run cybercenters around the country. But the relatively high cost keeps the Internet well beyond the reach of most Cubans, and the connections are unreliable.

“This is a rip-off,” said 33-year-old driver Yuri Gallardo after spending $10 for two hours of wireless access in the lobby of Hotel Nacional de Cuba in Havana, unable to sign into his Facebook account. “Foreigners come here and think that we’re primitive because we don’t have Internet,” Mr. Gallardo said. “Can you believe we’re at the best hotel in the country? Here we have 11 million people starving for Internet. It’s up to the government to loosen its grip.”

Such experiences have spawned a thriving Internet black market, where some residents—especially those with foreign spouses—rent Internet to friends and family. One Havana resident said he is able to afford the $60 a month for Internet service only because of his side rental business.

Some tech-savvy users, including some dissidents, are able to sidestep government restrictions with services such as ifttt.com, enabling the relay of cellphone text messages to social-media outlets.

Still, Internet speeds are improving somewhat. After using a slow satellite connection for years, a Caracas-funded, $70 million submarine fiber-optic cable line linking Cuba, Jamaica and Venezuela went online in January 2013, said Doug Madory, director of Internet analysis at Dyn Research.

The U.S. military, aiming to improve connectivity at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, is building a new $31 million fiber-optic cable line between Cuba from Florida that is set to begin operating at the end of 2015, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Southern Command said.

The cable will eventually provide Internet to the rest of the island, Ronald Bechtold, a former chief information officer at the Pentagon, testified in September 2013, months after secret rapprochement talks between the U.S. and Cuba began. “It’s not going to be for the base, 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,” Mr. Bechtold said. The cable will be “a gigantic bundle,” of which only some fibers will serve military needs, he said.

If Cuba moves forward on expanding access, Mr. Madory, the Internet analyst, said it may turn to Myanmar as a model. Since awakening from decades of dictatorship and opening itself to foreign telecom companies, the Southeast Asian nation has experienced an Internet boom for its 51 million people.

“There aren’t that many places in the world that are a green field,” said Mr. Madory. “If Cuba opens up, North Korea would be the only one left.”

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