EoW September 2013

Transatlantic cable

As of 4 th June and the “slackening of the ropes” welcomed, if provisionally, by TelecomTVOne , a Cuban citizen who can a ord it has apparently gained readier access to the Internet. After a tedious and bureaucratic vetting and authorisation process, a successful applicant will be credentialled by Etesca to make use of a computer terminal in a cyber salon. If the experiment is successful, more such salons can be expected to follow. † When the late president Hugo Chávez was in o ce in Venezuela, Cuba bene ted from highly preferential treat- ment. In 2011 the two countries were linked by a new bre optic sub-sea cable. It is believed, Mr Warwick wrote, that this cable “is the backbone that will provide expanded ‘high-speed’ Internet access to Cuba.” can expect to bene t from a new telecom law Important as it is, the Cuban experiment in liberalisation (“Internet Café,” above) is easily eclipsed by another recently launched Latin American telecom initiative. On 10 th June the president of Mexico, Enrique Peña Nieto, signed a monopoly-busting law that is expected to drive down telecom prices and cost the country’s richest man billions of dollars. Carlos Slim, whose America Movil SAB controls 70 per cent of Mexico’s cellphone business and 80 per cent of its landlines, had already taken reform-related losses that dropped him to second place, behind Microsoft founder Bill Gates, of the US, among the world’s richest people. Unlike the (former) world’s richest man in their midst, Mexican consumers

wrote that the cyber salon initiative o ers an example of the easing of state control over electronic equipment and media since 2008, when an ailing Fidel Castro nally relinquished the presidency. It is now possible for Cubans with enough hard cash to buy DVD players and even some mobile handsets. But Internet access has remained restricted, heavily censored, and prohibitively expensive for all but the political elite. Essentially, Mr Warwick wrote, the Internet has been the preserve of government and Communist Party higher-ups, some businesses, overseas companies (predominantly Spanish), and tourists. People on holiday, staying in hotels in Cuba, are routinely charged heavily for slow, selective, spasmodic access. Trusted writers and scientists and some others in the “state-sanctioned second tier of the elite” do, Mr Warwick noted, have archaic dial-up Internet access. But these privileged exceptions are rare. According to International Telecommunication Union (ITU) gures cited by TelecomTVOne , Internet penetration in Cuba is just 2.9 per cent. Some 16 per cent of the population can get access to limited and heavily policed e-mail via schools, universities, factories, o cially sanctioned computer clubs, and Cuba’s “overcrowded and overused” post o ces. These last, according to Mr Warwick, function much as social centres as well as arms of the state communications network. † The Cuban government has declared that better and wider connectivity “is consistent with Cuba’s stated strategy of continuing to facilitate more and more access to new technologies, depending on the availability of resources and with a focus that favours social use.”

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September 2013