Cuba plans Wi-Fi expansion

Cuba plans Wi-Fi expansion
BY MIMI WHITEFIELD
Miami Herald

In the first significant expansion of Internet service in Cuba since the
United States and Cuba announced they planned to resume diplomatic ties,
Cuba says it will add 35 Wi-Fi connections at public places around the
island in coming weeks.

Luis Manuel Díaz Naranjo, communication director at Etecsa, said in an
interview with Juventud Rebelde, the youth newspaper, that the state-run
telecom company hoped to roll out the expanded service at the beginning
of July. He said technical adjustments are already being made in Cuba's
wireless network to assure quality service.

The network points, he said, would be known as WIFI – ETECSA and would
be available to anyone with a permanent or temporary Nauta account.
Nauta.cu is the server that allows customers to get email on their
mobile phones, tablets or personal computers in Cuba.

The government also is planning to make costly Internet service more
affordable, dropping the price from $4.50 an hour to $2 starting July 1.
Even after more than halving the price, the cost of Internet access will
still be quite costly for many Cubans. Díaz Naranjo acknowledged as
much, saying that it's "still not the desired price" but should help
increase access.

In an article titled "Wi-Fi in the Air," Díaz Naranjo explained the
details. Rather than a new service, he said, WIFI – ETECSA is "a new
path" for services that are currently available at Etecsa access points
and Youth Clubs around the country.

Díaz Naranjo said connection speeds could reach 1 megabit per user and
that between 50 and 100 people could navigate at the same time depending
on the size of the wireless network.

"That means they have really fast connections to the Internet and I'd
really like to know how they will do it," said Larry Press, a computer
information systems professor at California State University, Dominguez
Hills.

When President Barack Obama and Cuban leader Raúl Castro announced a
rapprochement between the two countries on Dec. 17 after more than a
half century of acrimonious relations, Castro independently pledged that
Cuba would increase Internet connections for its citizens. Cuba's
Internet access rate is among the lowest in the Western hemisphere.

"There's been a groundswell of demand that Cubans enter the modern world
– and that only increased after Dec. 17. You could no longer as easily
blame the embargo (for Cuba's isolation)," said Ted Henken, a Baruch
College professor who has studied Cuban entrepreneurs and the Cuban
blogosphere. "There's this urgency among Cubans that every day they are
just one more step behind."

At the same time, Obama said the United States would not only allow more
Americans to travel to the island and make it easier to trade with
Cuba's fledgling private sector but also would allow the commercial
export of computers, related software and other telecommunications
equipment. More significantly, U.S. telecommunications providers can
partner with Cuban entities to improve the Cuban Internet and
communications between the island and the United States – if the Cuban
government takes them up on their proposals.

Since then, U.S. providers have announced a few small telecom openings,
and Google executives visited the island this month, apparently with a
proposal in hand. The search engine's chairman, Eric Schmidt, and a
delegation also visited Cuba last summer and several Google officials
made a trip in March.

Politico reported this week that Twitter executives also had talked with
Cuban officials about expanding their service to the island and have
suggested that Cubans be allowed to Tweet by text message rather than
using the Twitter.com website or Internet-based apps because Internet
access in Cuba is so low.

"We'd love to get a deal sooner rather than later," Colin Crowell,
Twitter's director of global public policy, told Politico. He said
Twitter discussed its ideas with officials at the Cuban Interests
Section in Washington.

Henken likened Cuba's Wi-Fi expansion to the "walled garden approach"
seen in the 1990s when service providers had control over applications,
content and media. Although it's still around in some forms, he said,
"it kind of went the way of the dinosaur."

By limiting WIFI – ETECSA to nauta users, Henken said, Cuba is taking a
similar approach. Nauta became very popular in Cuba last year because
nauta accounts gives customers email addresses that can be accessed from
their cellphones.

He also pointed out that just like everyone who signs up with an
Internet company here, Etecsa has access to people's information. While
U.S. companies might use that information to try to sell customers more
products, state-run Etecsa just has the information.

But Henken predicted that Internet access prices will drop even more in
Cuba and access will increase further.

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