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Wire & Cable ASIA – May/June 2011
39
From the
americas
80 million simultaneous phone calls: good news, Prensa
Latina noted, “in a country where web pages open at the
speed of molasses oozing out of a jar.”
However, according to the report, to which Associated
Press writer Paul Haven contributed, there is some question
as to access. Shortly before the landing of the cable was
celebrated, Cuba’s Deputy Information Minister Jorge Luis
Perdomo told reporters at a technology conference that,
for now at least, Cubans would still be able to go online
solely at their workplaces and schools. Mr Perdomo said the
limitations did not derive from any political concerns, but are
a function of dilapidated infrastructure and the time it will
take to improve it.
❖
❖
However, it would be idle to ignore the effect on official
Cuba of the US commercial, economic and financial
embargo, in place since 1962. According to Prensa Latina,
in the week before its account was published, bloggers
began circulating a video that appears to show an
Interior Ministry attaché warning a group of government
employees that the Internet could be employed to mount
an attack on Cuba.
“We are not ‘fighting’ new technology,” he says. “But we
must understand it, use it in our interest, and know what
our enemy means to do with it.”
The figure in the video repeatedly brings up the case
of an American subcontractor detained in Cuba since
December 2009 on charges of possession of satellite
phones and technology for the creation of unauthorised
Internet networks. Cuban prosecutors are seeking a
20-year jail term.
Elsewhere in telecom . . .
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❖
Huawei Technologies Co has, for some time, been
engaged in a public-relations campaign in the US to
counter what the Shenzhen-based phone-network
equipment maker says are unsubstantiated allegations
that it has close ties with the Chinese military and accepts
financial support from the Chinese government. On
25
th
February, Huawei took the effort up a notch, with a
roughly 2,000-word appeal to Washington to investigate
the claims and satisfy itself that the Chinese company
poses no threat to US national security. In an open letter
posted on the company’s website in China, deputy
chairman Ken Hu provided details about Huawei’s tax
breaks, government research grants, and its arrangement
with China Development Bank to provide loans to the
company’s clients. Such activities are, Mr Ken asserted,
entirely consistent with global norms.
A week before the open letter was posted, Huawei
gave up on its projected purchase of patents from
3Leaf Systems (Santa Clara, California), to comply
with a recommendation by the Committee on Foreign
Investment in the United States (CFIUS), the inter-agency
panel that vets such transactions. Prior to 3Leaf, Huawei
failed in bids to acquire companies including 3Com Corp
(Marlborough, Massachusetts), in 2008; and, in 2010,
2Wire (San Jose, California) and the wireless business of
Motorola (Schaumburg, Illinois).
Dorothy Fabian — Features Editor