Cuba confirms undersea cable carrying data traffic

[MADem]

8. No it doesn't. It has to do with the Cubans rejecting US comm links and using VZ ones instead.

The Cubans could have had some state of the art American internet for the last four years, if they wanted. To include those hotspots on every corner.

Further, there are work arounds for everything, obviously. Otherwise there wouldn't be any Japanese and Korean cars in Cuba--and we know they're there--not everyone is driving around in Russian pieces of shit and old American cars anymore, and nobody in the US excoriated the Japanese or Koreans for selling 'em the cars.

For the sake of argument, though, let's pretend that the US is "on this" like white on rice and really cares one way or another about this shit anymore (which they don't). It would be a simple matter for the (fill in handy dandy third party nation) to create a company exclusively to do the deal, and IF (not when, if) the US caught wind of it, poof, the company dissolves, disbands, disappears--there's no one left to "punish." A new company then springs up to "service" the equipment that Cuba possesses.

And you're seriously trying to pretend that we're the only vendor of routers in the world? Or that we'd start wagging fingers at China when they sold them to Cuba, given the amount of money we owe them?

That's just a foolish premise.


Here's how it all breaks down--from our friends at Wiki:

U.S. regulations were recently modified to encourage communication links with Cuba.[4] In 2009 President Obama announced that the US would allow American companies to provide Internet service to Cuba, however, the Cuban government rejected the offer and is instead working with the Venezuelan government.[7]

There's much more at this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_in_Cuba

A special permit is required to use the Internet. Access to the Internet is heavily controlled, and all e-mails are closely monitored.[8][9]

The Cuban authorities have called the Internet "the great disease of 21st century" due to 'counter-revolutionary' information being available on a number of websites, some of which are official news sites.[10] As a result of computer ownership bans, computer ownership rates were among the world's lowest.[9] However, since buying a computer was legalized in 2007, the ownership of computers in Cuba soared, dramatically increasing the number of Internet users. But, the rates still remain quite low, partially due to the high costs of systems and Internet usage per hour in contrast to the average monthly wage.[8]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_in_Cuba


The Cuban GOVERNMENT is dragging their feet--they know the day is coming when they can't control their population anymore, but they're doing the dribs-n-drabs thing; trying to slow the pace of change for as long as they can. As it is, the government's censorship of the net is ONOROUS--you don't have to look far to see how they oversee what they have, and how they keep the cost so high, and the permit requirements in place, to limit access.

In time, though, that will change, and the country will change too.