14ymedio.com

Cuba is at the forefront of the list of countries with the least internet penetration in the Western hemisphere. An hour of navigation from a state-provided wifi zone costs the equivalent of two days pay for a professional, and is plagued by crashes, service faults, and hackers who wirelessly steal the balance on your internet card, as well as being subject to the physical theft of phones, laptops and tablets by thieves who haunt the wifi zones for this purpose.

“This agreement allows ETECSA to use our technology to reduce latency to locally deliver some of our most popular content and a higher bandwidth, for example YouTube videos,” Google said in a statement.

Once stored on servers within Cuba, that content will reach internet users up to 10 times faster, according to expert predictions. But the agreement does not affect the customers’ bandwidth or allow access to sites that the government of Raul Castro keeps under strict censorship.

Google has been exploring service on the island since 2014, when Schmidt visited Cuba along with other executives and interviewed journalists with 14ymedio, students at the University of Information Sciences in Havana, and Cuban officials. Shortly after that trip, the company opened its products to Cuban users on the island – who previously could not access them – including products such as Google Chrome, Google Play and Google Analytics.

The news of the agreement with the US company spread by word of mouth among Cubans and was presented in the official media as an achievement by the government “to improve the computerization of Cuban society,” but few spoke about the details.

“I hope that now the ability to surf the internet from cellphones is closer,” said Vosvel Camejo, a customer of the only telephone company allowed in the country, and for whom Google is the only entity that can save the country “from underdevelopment.”

The signing of the agreement comes a few weeks from Republican Donald Trump’s inauguration as president of the United States, on 20 January 2017. President-elect Trump has been inconsistent in his position on the process of normalization of relations with the island, moved forward by his predecessor, Barack Obama. Google has rushed to sign the agreement, given the uncertainty presented by the tycoon’s arrival in the White House.

For the Government of Havana, the clock is ticking off certain emergencies in telecommunications. In February 2011, a fiber optic cable connecting the island to Venezuela reached land on Siboney Beach in eastern Cuba. This cable carries the major flow of data entering and leaving Cuba.

Access from home is only allowed for a very small group of officials, professionals with links to officialdom, and foreign residents of the island. “The ideal would be for this agreement to also bring internet to Cuban homes, so that the country can develop all the talent of its people,” says Camejo.

For now, the company, based in California, has committed to improve the browsing experience, a step that can be very important for the development of the independent sector that produces audiovisuals, and for the “YouTubers” who have begun to emerge in the country.

Independent organizations such as the Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU) frequently use video services to publish reports, interviews and images of repression in the east. With the new agreement, their presence and effectiveness on the web can grow significantly.

For the virtual offensive they have called on university students, members of the Young Communist Union, and teenagers in high school. The political battle on the network will be accompanied by activities and celebrations in dozens of parks and plazas throughout the country.

“I have to go, but variety is the spice of life; because I publish on Twitter they asked me to take advantage of it and connect with some friends on Facebook,” a student majoring in History at the University of Havana, who is participating in the digital offensive, told this newspaper.

The official press has called the day a “hornet’s nest” that is held under the slogan “My Cuba with rights.” The activities not only address the National Day for Human Rights, but also plan a tribute to “the chief defender of the humble, Comandante en Jefe Fidel Castro Ruz,” according to the announcement.

The activities planned for Saturday also include sports competitions, cultural shows, book sales and presentations of audiovisual materials. The sites chosen for the celebrations coincide in many cases with points where the opposition traditionally demonstrates during the Human Rights Day.

University Law Professor Luis Sola Vila spoke on the Legal segment of the morning news magazine, saying that “in our country the Universal Declaration of Human Rights went into effect with the triumph of the Revolution, undeniably.”

Sola Vila noted that Cuba is a signatory to several treaties, including those against torture, discrimination against women and racial discrimination, but omitted that the government of the island has not yet ratified the United Nations International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and its International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

Amid the intense ideological campaign on display in the official media for the occasion, conspicuously absent has been any reference to the rights of association or freedom of expression.

From the early morning hours several activists denounced police operations around their homes and warnings from State Security not to go out into the street. At dawn the headquarters of the Ladies in White in the Havana neighborhood of Lawton was surrounded by political police, according to a report from the dissident Angel Moya.

Officialdom expects to mark another ideological victory on this Human Rights Day, keeping the opposition forces under control, deploying an army of followers on the internet, and staging prepared celebrations in Cuban parks.

The closing of that stage, which was characterized by foreign investment from countries such as Mexico and Italy, was a symbolic slamming of the door in the same year that the Italian company Telecom sold its shares – 27% of the company – for 207 million dollars. With complete control of the country’s phone service, ETECSA began to dictate its operations.

Currrently, the monopoly manages all fixed and cellular phone service on the island, email communications and internet, and the distribution of recharge cards, the latter of which has improved in recent years with the licensing of private individuals to work as telecommunications agents.

Although in the last five years ETECSA has expanded from 350 to a little more that 600 base stations in the country and brought its signal to all the municipalities in the country, in web services and email ongoing problems generate constant complaints among users.

“I can only send or receive messages late at night, when there’s no one on-line,” protests Yohandri Rojas who lives in Santa Clara. The 29-year-old complains about the poor quality of the Nauta email service, which is managed from mobile phones. “It’s a disaster,” he says.

Rojas works with a friend in a small place that repairs mobile phones, and has extensive knowledge of computing and communications that he taught himself. “This is because of problems with the bandwidth on the data network,” he explained to 14ymedio. “What has happened is that ETECSA has not expanded its servers consistent with the growth in the number of users,” he emphasizes.

ETECSA refused to answer questions from this newspaper to explain the causes of the frequent crashes in service and the poor quality of its operation. “We are working on solving the problem,” an employee at the number to report problems curtly told this newspaper.

Services from email to cellphones have worsened in the past year. “They have sold more accounts than they can effectively manage,” says a telecommunications agent in the Regla district of Havana, who preferred to remain anonymous. “The service is disappointing and if another company emerges offering a different service, ETECSA is going to lose a lot of customers.”

In the middle of this year, Ministry of Communications authorities let it be known that there are 11.2 million temporary or permanent email accounts on mobile phones. Many of them are opened by tourists passing through the country, but at least half are regularly used by domestic customers.

Each megabyte downloaded or uploaded via email on Nauta mobile phone services costs one Cuban convertible peso, the daily wage of a professional. But because of the instability in connections, the same amount can cost three times as much, because interruptions cancel message transmissions over and over again.

The problems are worse during weeks when “bonus recharges” are offered, allowing the user to purchase a recharge amount on the internet with a bonus as a “gift” from the company. “During those days there is no way I can get into my Nauta email inbox,” explains Deyanira, a nurse who lives in Havana’s Cerro neighborhood.

“When they announce ‘double’ or ‘bonus’ recharges, I know I won’t be able to communicate with my family by email that week,” she explains. The young woman’s mother lives in Germany with her younger sister, and email via mobile phones is the quickest way to stay in touch. However, most of the time, “my messages remain in the outbox for hours or days, waiting for ETECSA to wake up,” she jokes.

Bandwidth problems on the cellular network affect more than just email services. Ernesto, a Valencian visiting Cuba for two weeks, complains that “the roaming service is very unstable, and sometimes there’s a signal and sometimes not.” At more than 5 euros for every megabyte sent, the tourist tried to use “Facebook and also Instagram, but with little success.”

In recent months, Cuba has signed agreements for roaming with several telephone companies in the US, most notably Verizon, Sprint and AT&T.

“If they continue to strain the network with users demanding data, but do not expand or update the infrastructure, it will collapse,” predicts Yohandri Rojas. “ETECSA is going to be like the hard currency stores that sell beer: high demand and low supply,” he scoffs.