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Cuba in Transition :: Volume 21 THE PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE OF THE INTERNET IN CUBA Larry Press This paper looks at the past, present and future of the Chinese will also be involved in the upgrading of do- Internet in Cuba.1 At the dawn of the Internet, Cuba mestic infrastructure. U.S. and Cuban leaders are led the Caribbean in computer networking and was also aging and will doubtless change, but it is uncer- well positioned to continue to lead. But the Cuban tain how those changes will impact the Internet. Internet stagnated due to the collapse of the Soviet THE CUBAN INTERNET—PAST3 Union, the U.S. embargo, and the “dictator’s dilemma”—a desire to enjoy the benefits of connec- Cuba was the most advanced networking nation in tivity without its political and cultural risks. the Caribbean in the pre-Internet era. Cuba account- Today, Cuban infrastructure, skills, and application ed for 32% of Caribbean international news and sophistication are behind the rest of the Caribbean email traffic and had more user accounts than the 4 and most of the world. The Cuban Internet is like rest of the Caribbean combined. their old cars—Cuba is stuck at Web 1.0. Four Cuban organizations had networks and ex- What of the outlook for the future? Here we have changed international email and news on a daily ba- questions and predictions, but few certain answers. sis: The ALBA-1 undersea cable connecting Cuba and • CENIAI (Center for the Automatic Interchange Venezuela has been installed and will begin service in of Information)—Soviet connection the fall of 2011.2 The cable will dramatically increase • Tinored—Youth computer clubs the speed of Cuban international connectivity and de- crease its cost. It seems safe to predict that current us- • CIGBnet—Center for Genetic Engineering and ers in areas like education, health care, government Biotechnology and tourism will be first to reap the benefit of ALBA-1. • InfoMed—National System of Health Informa- tion New domestic communication infrastructure and human resources will be needed if Cuba is to utilize The networking organization CENIAI was strong the cable, but it is not clear how this investment will and a Caribbean leader since they had been Cuba’s be financed or how much progress has been made to gateway to the Soviet bloc since 1982. Their staff was date. Given the U.S. trade embargo and Chinese in- well educated and understood the importance of volvement in the ALBA-1 cable, it is likely that the computer networks. 1. This paper draws upon a more detailed report on the state of the Internet in Cuba: http://som.csudh.edu/fac/lpress/cuba/chapters/ lpdraft2.docx. 2. http://laredcubana.blogspot.com/2011/08/alba-1–cable-to-begin-service-in.html. 3. For historical reports on the state of the Internet in Cuba, see http://som.csudh.edu/fac/lpress/cubabiblio.htm. 4. Press, L., and Armas, C., “Cuban Network Update,” OnTheInternet, pp 46–49, Vol. 2, No. 1, Jan/Feb, 1996. 186 The Past, Present and Future of the Internet in Cuba The other organizations reflect values of the THE CUBAN INTERNET—PRESENT10 revolution—education, health care and support for The situation has not improved much since that the countryside. CIGBnet and InfoMed reflected the time. Cuba is now last among the Caribbean nations Cuban emphasis on health care and medical science. in broadband Internet subscribers and secure Inter- The Youth Computer Clubs (YCC) were unique ed- net servers.11 Only Belize, Bolivia, El Salvador, Haiti, ucation centers found throughout the island at a time Nicaragua and Surinam trail Cuba in Internet users when networks in developing nations were almost al- per capita, and Cuba is far below average for the re- ways restricted to one or two cities. gion. It is also noteworthy that the number of PCs On September 9, 1996 Cuba connected to the Inter- on the Internet and the number of .cu domain names net with the cooperation of the U.S. National Sci- actually declined in 2010. ence Foundation’s International Connections Man- Cuba made gains in mobile phone subscriptions in agement program, which assisted research and 2010, but the per capita subscriber rate exceeds that education networks in developing nations to connect of only 8 of the nations reporting to the International to the Internet.5 Telecommunication Union: St. Helena, Myanmar, CENIAI Director Jesús Martínez sent the traditional D.P.R. Korea, Eritrea, Solomon Islands, Somalia, first email to his colleagues in the Internet communi- Marshall Islands, and Ethiopia.12 ty when they established their first connection to the Internet.6 Martínez’ message radiated pride and opti- Cuba claims to have 1.79 million Internet users, but mism. He foresaw a new era and had reason to be op- the experience of a Cuban Internet user is nothing timistic. Cuba had trained technicians at CENIAI like that of users in developed nations. They are and other organizations and a grass roots training stuck in the dial-up era of the 1990s—access is slow, program for users in the YCCs. Sadly, in spite of this, expensive and restricted. the Cuban Internet stagnated, while most of the All aspects of the Cuban Internet—international world raced ahead. links, the access network and the domestic During this period, I conducted two studies of the backbone—are slow. Cuba’s international links are Cuban Internet.7 The studies used a broad, 6–di- via satellite and have a total capacity of only 209 mension Mosaic Group framework for characterizing Mbps upstream and 379 down. This is very slow for the state of the Internet in a nation.8 After two years, an island with a population over 11 million. To put Cuba remained at the lowest level in five of the six it in context, my university has around 10,000 stu- dimensions.9 dents and our Internet connection speed is 1 Gbps. 5. Press, L., “Seeding Networks: the Federal Role,” Communications of the ACM, pp 11–18, Vol 39., No. 10, October, 1996, reprinted in OnTheInternet, Vol. 3, No. 1, January/February, 1997, pp. 13–22. 6. http://laredcubana.blogspot.com/2011/02/cubas-first-internet-connection.html. 7. For links to reports on that work, see http://som.csudh.edu/fac/lpress/cubabiblio.htm. 8. For the Mosaic Group see: http://mosaic.unomaha.edu/. For an article outlining the analysis framework, using Cuba as an example, see: Larry Press, Grey Burkhart, Will Foster, Seymour Goodman, Peter Wolcott, and Jon Woodard, “An Internet Diffusion Frame- work,” Communications of the ACM, Vol. 41, No. 10, pp. 21–26, October, 1998, http://som.csudh.edu/fac/lpress/articles/acmfwk/ac- mfrwk.htm. 9. http://som.csudh.edu/fac/lpress/devnat/nations/cuba/cubadim.htm. 10. For a more detailed report on the state of the Internet in Cuba as of January 2011, see http://som.csudh.edu/fac/lpress/cuba/chap- ters/lpdraft2.docx. 11. http://laredcubana.blogspot.com/2011/07/ict-statistics-for-2010–more-internet.html; 2011, Oficina Nacional de Estadísticas, Anuario Estadístico de Cuba 2009, Section 17 (information and communication technology), http://www.one.cu/aec2010/esp/ 20080618_tabla_cuadro.htm. 12. ITU database, queried July 2011. 187 Cuba in Transition • ASCE 2011 This situation will finally change with the lighting of Cuban Internet access is not only slow, it is also ex- the ALBA-1 undersea cable from Venezuela. pensive in absolute terms and even more so relative to Cuban incomes. Access in an ETECSA Internet The access network is also slow and outdated. Nearly center, cybercafé or hotel costs between 6 and 12 all connections are over the telephone network using CUC (1 CUC = $1.08) per hour.13 Bear in mind that analog modems, although ISDN service is advertised these are for dial-up or Wi-Fi links, and the average as available in a few locations. monthly salary in Cuba is around $20.14 I know less about the backbone networks. There is A foreign resident or someone who needs home con- some intra and intercity fiber and high speed micro- nectivity for his or her work may get a home account, wave links, but, given the low speed of international but these are also expensive. For example, 10 hours links and the access network, there would have been of dial-up Internet per month cost 15 CUC, 15 no need to construct a high speed backbone. That hours of international email and intra-national Web situation changes with the installation of ALBA-1. 15 CUC, and 10 hours of intra-national email and Web 20 CUC. We can measure Internet speed using Ping, a pro- gram that reports the time it takes to send a data Note that people with home or business accounts of- packet from one Internet host to another and receive ten share them illegally. For example, an anonymous confirmation that it was received. Tests from my uni- user stated that home accounts are limited to a speci- versity show an average Ping time of .634 seconds to fied number of hours per month, but “part of this www.jovenclub.cu in Cuba, while Ping times to time is usually (and illegally) shared with other for a UCLA, Google, Ford and the University of Chile fee of $20–$30.”15 were .019, .023, .079, and .199 seconds respectively. Cuba’s Ping time of .634 seconds seems fast, but at Organizations can also get dedicated Internet links. that speed, real time applications like voice or video An extremely slow 19.2 kbps link is 120 CUC intra- conversation or browsing modern, complex Web nationally and 330 CUC internationally.
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