Cuba’s State Telephone Monopoly Denies Home ADSL
HAVANA TIMES — Cuba’s telecommunications company hastened this week to plug a leak that said that the state-run company, ETECSA (Empresa de Telecomunicaciones de Cuba, S.A.), would “offer broad-band Internet access packages to Cuban homes through ADSL technology and at varying connection speeds.”
ADSL (asymmetric digital subscriber line) is a technology for data transmission over telephone lines.
Cubans are not allowed to contract home internet service and ETECSA was quick to make clear that is not on the horizon.
The leak was published on June 23 in the blog “La chiringa de Cuba”. Its author, Carlos Alberto Pérez, wrote that he obtained a document with that information from an anonymous source at ETECSA.
The connection speeds would be guaranteed on a “best-effort basis,” Pérez wrote, meaning that users would get “different bandwidths and response times depending on the volume of traffic on the Web.”
The hypothetical cost of each package would depend on the hours per month that a user might spend surfing the net. The rates ranged from 20 hours ($3 for domestic navigation; $10 for international navigation) to 220 hours ($25 domestic; $60 international.)
ETECSA on Thursday reacted to the unauthorized disclosure of the document with a statement that decried the “unscrupulous manner” in which it had been leaked and published.
The following is the ETECSA statement translated by Progreso Weekly:
“On June 23, an article was published on the Internet that disclosed alleged information about the introduction of Internet service at home, which has been replicated by several digital media.
“The content of that article, obtained from a source not authorized by ETECSA, was based on a document utilized to deliver a course to company specialists. [The document] contained technical information with hypothetical data made up for likely scenarios regarding the target market and stages of implementation.
“[The document] makes reference to a likely list of prices for home Internet, which is not real because it distorts the prices applied since 2014 for switched-access services.
“As already reported, ETECSA is developing a set of investments that will contribute to the process of information for [Cuban] society, wherein the development of the infrastructure of telecommunications is an essential axis that includes the creation of capabilities to gradually increase the paths of access to the Internet.
“While these investments proceed, priority has been given to the collective public areas, which by now number more than 500. To these will be added 35 WiFi-access zones that were announced on June 18 through the various media.
“We regret that someone, in an unscrupulous manner, manipulates our company’s internal information to disinform the population, since, as we have often repeated, this company will inform in a timely manner whenever the conditions are created for the opening of new services, providing all the details related to the supply and means of utilization of same.”
It is exactly because communism failed, that these states need to try a different approach. Staying in power will require opening economic opportunities as well access to other middle class appliances such as the Internet. Sqauler as the price of being saved from evils of unfettered capitalism is a losers game. As Venezuela is learning, it was better when toilet paper was not a luxury.
Yes, they won’t faster than they feel in control.
Marti, agree with you often but I think the present holders of power in Cuba would rather slow that process than expedite mass access to the internet. The reasons are obvious.
Not in this socialist system for fifty six tedious years and not in the USSR system for 83 years. Not in the Chinese system and not in the North Korean system. So, where has equal access to information been provided as a basic right in a socialist system. Face it N.J. Marti, socialist theory has no place in the real world, but is just a pipe dream for left wing academics.
The Castro family regime has no intention whatsoever of providing access to information. you will not see any form of Internet resembling that to which you and I have access.
Equal access to information is a basic right in a socialist system. This should move faster for the people want high speed access. Safety measures will of course be expected, but that technology is now old.