Cuba confirms undersea cable carrying data traffic

 
No Author Published: January 24, 2013    Comment on this article Leave a comment

photo - FILE - In this Jan. 22, 2011 file photo, people stand on a breakwater, with a Venezuelan flag, left, and a Cuban flag, as a specialized ship rolls out a fiber-optic cable, suspended from buoys, off La Guaira, Venezuelan coast. Cuba's state telecom monopoly confirmed Thursday, Jan. 24, 2013 that the island's first hard-wired Internet connection to the outside world has been activated, but said it won't lead to an immediate increase in access. The $70 million ALBA-1 arrived on the island from Venezuela in February 2011 to great hoopla, but officials soon stopped mentioning the cable amid rumors of mismanagement and corruption involving the project. (AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos, File)
FILE - In this Jan. 22, 2011 file photo, people stand on a breakwater, with a Venezuelan flag, left, and a Cuban flag, as a specialized ship rolls out a fiber-optic cable, suspended from buoys, off La Guaira, Venezuelan coast. Cuba's state telecom monopoly confirmed Thursday, Jan. 24, 2013 that the island's first hard-wired Internet connection to the outside world has been activated, but said it won't lead to an immediate increase in access. The $70 million ALBA-1 arrived on the island from Venezuela in February 2011 to great hoopla, but officials soon stopped mentioning the cable amid rumors of mismanagement and corruption involving the project. (AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos, File)

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Its status was unknown until this week, when U.S. Internet analysis firm Renesys documented evidence of faster data traffic to Cuba and concluded that the cable had been switched on.

Dissident blogger Yoani Sanchez, an advocate for wider Internet dissemination, questioned whether the government would have said anything about the cable if Renesys and foreign media had not reported about it.

"(Hashtag) Granma says now it's necessary to build infrastructure for the (hashtag) FiberOpticCable to provide service!" she tweeted. "And what were they doing the past two years?"

Cuba has the second-worst Internet connectivity rate in the world, according to one study.

According to government statistics, about 16 percent of islanders have some online access, usually through their school or workplace and often just to an Intranet that also has email capability.

Just 2.9 percent of Cubans report having full access to the World Wide Web. However outside observers say the true number is more like 5 to 10 percent accounting for underreporting of dial-up minutes resold on the black market.

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Peter Orsi on Twitter: www.twitter.com/Peter_Orsi

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