Cuba: a nation gets connected | Hacker News Reader

Cuba: a nation gets connected

miamiherald.com

67 pointscaiobegotti36 comments

The title is a bit of a misnomer. Cuba was already connected to the Internet in the early 1990s. See http://som.csudh.edu/fac/lpress/devnat/nations/cuba/cuba2.ht... :

> One of the authors (Snyder) was able to make a direct connection from the CENIAI Unix system to a VAX/VMS system in his apartment using a single X.121 address at the Havana end. To get to the Login prompt, his connection ran from the PAD program on the CENIAI Unix microcomputer over the X.25 satellite link to Moscow. VNIIPAS received the call and routed it to the international Sprint network. It was routed to Reston, Virginia where it entered the domestic US network. Sprint conveyed the call to Columbus, Ohio, and passed it to the CompuServe X.25 gateway. CompuServe carried it to University of Arizona's Telecommunications Group where it was translated from X.25 to DECnet format, and routed through Ethernet, fiber optics, a 56K line, and an asynch 9.6K DECnet line to Snyder's apartment. The gateway VAX in his apartment passed the call to his workstation VAX, which displayed ``Username:''!

North Korea has also been connected to the Internet for a good long time -- doesn't mean that 99.9% of its population has any access.

I do agree that this article is a bit hypey, a few dozen Wifi hotspots that charge $2/hr isn't exactly a telecoms resolutions. Unlike NK, Cuba has had public Internet for a long time, it has just been expensive and inconvenient, and continues to be so.

What is your point of bringing North Korea into the thread? There are plenty of countries which have worse internet penetration than Cuba, including Haiti, the Solomon Islands, Cambodia, and Myanmar. Surely the last a better comparison to Cuba than NK, no?

BTW, a quick check of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_in_Cuba says that more about 3% of the population had internet access already by 2002, and about 25% now. Slow Internet? Certainly. Filtered? Yes. Expensive? Yes. But why bring up an irrelevant 0.1% statistic?

You can't think of any similarities between North Korea and Cuba?

I can think of similarities between North Korea and pretty much any other country in the world. I'm sure you can as well.

Cuba's isolation is only from the United States. The rest of the world comes and goes as they please. It's a favourite tourist destination of many Canadians and Europeans. I've seen Chinese construction and petroleum interests there as well.

As for Internet, they had it, but prices are far beyond what an individual can afford. It was also so slow it wasn't worth bothering. I gave up after 30 minutes having only downloaded a few emails.

I recently met a Web developer visiting Toronto from Cuba. I was impressed that he could get any work done with such slow downloads.

I don't think the NK comment was meant to equate Cuba and NK but rather to illustrate the fact that a country can have one or more internet connections and still not be considered connected as a country. Your earlier comment claimed that the title was a misnomer because there was a connection established in the early 90s.

It certainly was meant to equate aspects of Cuba and North Korea. The text "North Korea has also" is a direct comparison between the two countries, as is "Unlike NK, Cuba ...".

I don't see how the comparison to North Korea is useful. For one, I've been distracted by the phrase 'connected to the Internet for a good long time'. I can find nothing to verify that statement, and I can't help but wonder if it's actually true.

If Cuba has had 'public Internet for a long time', then how much longer has NK had internet access?

Leave out the North Korea reference and the text becomes "Cuba may have had Internet for a good long time -- doesn't mean that more than a select few had any access". That's simpler, persuasive, and more obviously correct. Which makes me think there has to be a reason for mentioning North Korea in the first place, out of all the available possibilities.

I'd say the reason to mention NK was because I'm sure if you asked most people in the US and most of Europe, they'd say that NK likely doesn't have the internet. But it does. Just not available to the masses. Availability to the masses is the point of the headline here.

I disagree. The North Korea comparison is extremely useful, seeing as Cuba and North Korea are among the third world nations with the least widespread public Internet connectivity over the last 20 years. They're also both ruled by Communist dictatorships and have been for many decades. They both have extraordinarily low median incomes, among the lowest on earth in fact. Cuba is better off than North Korea, that's well understood.

Cuba should be equated to North Korea, for decades they've been in the same tier of economic development and the same tier of Internet access. The parent using Cuba as a reference makes perfect sense. What other nation would one compare Cuba to exactly? Where else do people earn $20 per month, have extremely limited access to the Internet, no freedom of speech or press, and live under a Communist dictatorship?

I would compare Cuba to Myanmar or Laos.

I have difficulties accepting the meaningfulness of the statement "Cuba and North Korea are among the third world nations with the least widespread public Internet connectivity over the last 20 years". The list at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of... puts Cuba at 73rd least, when ranked by percentage, out of 207 listed names. (Note: that list includes Non-country and disputed areas, like the U.S. Virgin Islands, which cannot properly be included in a first/third world comparison, and it excludes South Sudan and North Korea.) While I agree that Cuba is in the bottom half of third world nations, there are some 70+ other countries in the same category. Including Myanmar and Laos. (As a minor point, Cuba is technically a second world country under the original three world theory that introduce first- and third-world.)

I was unable to confirm the statement 'extraordinarily low median incomes, among the lowest on earth in fact'. The lists at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28PP... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28no... put Cuba about in the middle of the world's countries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GNI_%28no... puts Cuba in the "Upper-middle-income group" of countries. Compare this to North Korea, which is in the "Low-income group".

Triple-checking, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Dev... puts Cuba in the 'Very high human development' category, while North Korea is in the 'Low human development' category along with Somalia and Tuvalu.

How do you quantify 'same tier of economic development'? Cuba's biotech and tourism industries are obviously more developed than North Korea's. Everything I've found suggests that those two countries are not in the same economic tier.

As an observation, North Korea no longer calls itself communist, and hasn't since 1992. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_socialist_states#cite_... . Its juche ideology does not appear to be based on socialist or Marxist-Leninist lines. Comparing Cuba's government to North Korea's is somewhat like comparing the US's multi-party representative democracy to Russia's.

You asked "Where else do people earn $20 per month, have extremely limited access to the Internet, no freedom of speech or press, and live under a Communist dictatorship?"

Laos. It is a "communist (Marxist-Leninist), socialist, single-party state" (quoting Wikipedia) just like Cuba. The per-capita GDP is $4,986/year while Cuba's is $18,796. (I can't find the median income for Laos, but it has "one of the lowest annual incomes in the world" (quoting Wikipedia) and below Cuba on the HDI.) 12.5% of the population of Laos are Internet users, compared to Cuba's 25%. Quoting https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-press/2013/laos :

> Press freedom in Laos remains highly restricted. Despite advances in telecommunications infrastructure, government control of nearly all print and broadcast news prevents the development of a vibrant, independent press. ... Under the criminal code, individuals may be jailed for up to one year for reporting news that “weakens the state” or importing a publication that is “contrary to national culture.”

Freedom House gave Laos a "Press Freedom Score" of 84, while Cuba's is 92. 100 is the worst.

Anedoctal sidenote: internet penetration might be bad in Cambodia but at least in its "big" cities speed/latency is pretty decent :-)

What is not addressed in the article is how open the access is, or if there's a Great Firewall of Cuba. I cannot help but suspecting that there is.

Connectivity to the outside word is not, by itself, a virtue unless you get access to the outside world. If that perspective is so heavily edited that all you get is the same stale thinking you had before the connectivity, can you say you even are truly connected? I think not.

To anyone in Cuba: If you're a tech professional, can you run http://netalyzr.icsi.berkeley.edu/cli.html and report the results back?

http://netalyzr.icsi.berkeley.edu/restore/id=43ca253f-8683-9...

Replace this link with a screenshot excluding or obfuscating your IP.

Fifteen years ago there were some country-wide ACLs. I wouldn't be surprised if they're still in place.

It looks like they're using some pretty extensive proxies (read: every service) currently.

My brief experience while on vacation in 2010 is that Internet access is far too expensive for an individual.

I suspect there's little or no censorship. Cuba has no money for such luxuries. With a busy tourist industry it would be difficult to keep out news of the outside world as is possible in China.

There is an Open Source user group in Cuba called GUTL (http://gutl.jovenclub.cu/). I met one of their members at the last Python Unconference in Hamburg.

They want to organize a tech conference in Cuba, the idea being that for the exchange of knowledge it is easier to bring foreigners to Cuba than for Cubans to go to international conferences. See http://www.cubaconf.org/

maravilloso, and welcome to our brethren in Cuba! But there is still something sad about the internet reaching all of the planet. I kinda liked the idea of a place, a mythical place, an unspoiled place....untouched by rent-seeking Search, un-comment-streamed, un-immediate. A place where Adwords know no purchase...a modern-day unwired Atlantis!

Just to relax. Once in a while.

That's why many people have cottages in the middle of no where: to get away. It's sort of a romantic idea.

But to impose that "ideal" on a whole nation is something else entirely.

Completely agreed mfoy_... I would hate to have my freedom of information curtailed by anybody, and do not wish it upon any individual or nation.

Yet still...a cottage in the hills. This gives me personal freedom, but it does not give me access to a whole society untouched by the other (arguably often negative) aspects of connectivity. If we accept that we are social beings, that we are not merely individuals, that society is in some ways adversely affected by connectivity, then it is still reasonable to long for a social place, a whole society, free of the internet?

For your own benefit... Cubans meanwhile probably aren't so crazy about forced disconnection.

There's always North Korea!

Move North :)

10 minutes out of any town in the Yukon, there is no cell service, and certainly no internet. It's great to drive 1000+ miles without service, and camp for weeks and weeks without hearing from the outside world (no regular radio either, when you really get out there).

imo, the chat application mentioned in the article is available here: https://imo.im/

I was a heavy user of imo because it was a generic xmpp client, and used it mainly for google chat, along with federated facebook chat etc. It was a really good interface for handling multiple chats at the same time (This is before slack). However, google's move to move away from federated xmpp cost them a lot as they lost a lot of customers, iirc.

Nice to see that they are still doing good.

I was there in may, Cuba was already connected. Its just another "look at how good America is making Cuba" article.

http://laredcubana.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/cuban-infrastructu...

Really? Where/how exactly did you read that in the article? All I could find that is slightly related to your comment is this:

"Although some U.S. companies, including Google, seem eager to help Cuba build up its Internet capabilities, the government still hasn't tipped its hand on how much help it wants from the United States."

I'm pretty sure Cubans don't care who's setting things up as long as they get connected at last. To me the article seems to focus on the OMG-I-AM-ONLINE aspect of things, reporting people trying to make video calls for the first time and such. That's special and that's about technology enabling people, not much about politics at this point IMHO.

I agree, OMG-I-AM-ONLINE, is pretty much the only good thing about it. I'm cuban, I haven't lived there for a few years now. My wife and her family have been able to speak using video. I have also heard stories of people have been able to see they loved ones after many years. Other than that, cuban internet is horrible. I have had all kinds. I worked in a 300 employees company where our internet was 196kbs. After that I worked in another with 2 mbps, but this one had more than 4000 employees across the country, so after 5 pm the internet was awesome, not so much on office hours. I never had internet at home until I quit my job to work as freelancer, then I had to pay 60 usd for 80 hrs a month on a commuted connection, which never when above 40kbps. All of that happened after 2005. And btw, that commuted connection, was because my grandmother was born in Spain, so she had the right to have internet, I was lucky. Other cubans need to use more irregular methods. Today it's not much better, yes, you can have internet on the park, but it is still very hard to actually use it to get work done. For that, you still need to leave the country.

Cuba has been technically "connected" for years. The question is how widespread internet data connections are among people in the country. When I've been there Internet access has been virtually non-existent and when I did try to access the internet over wifi, the bandwidth was abysmal. (i.e. < dialup)

this is exciting! even more exciting would be when the regime collapses. what sort of war crimesque stories would we hear? ex. who was sending the messages on the number stations? imagine one day, north korea....the horrors that would be unveiled while the world sat by looking the other way. it would be the biggest embarassment of humanity. in our modern day and age, in this day of UN and international bullshit, we allow a nationwide gulag to operate and continue to attack south korea.

Are you seriously comparing Cuba to NK?

A country whose internal economic structuring during McCarthyism netted them an economic and political blackballing by their nearest trading neighbor (one of the largest economic powerhouses in the world) and all their allies, but which still managed to produce one of the world's best healthcare systems and even send their surplus of doctors on numerous humanitarian missions... how is this even remotely the same as a country that chose to cloister itself and actively deny its citizens rights?

Or have I just been trolled, maybe...

To use your words, Cuba actively denies its citizens rights. There is no freedom of speech, press, or assembly. Internet access is closely monitored and heavily restricted. For a long time it was illegal to even leave Cuba. My family had to tell a web of lies to escape decades ago. Cuban doctors are forced to work overseas for pittances and have minders to keep them from defecting. The same goes for Cuban athletes, who routinely defect despite the regime's efforts to stop them. The Castros funded communist horrors across South America and even in Africa. Today they prop up their autocratic allies in Venezuela. The idea that Cuba has "one of the world's best healthcare systems" has been thoroughly debunked too.

Further, what you call "economic restructuring" most others would see as illegal confiscation of property. It's little reported today, but one of the original reasons for the US embargo against Cuba is the nationalization of American-owned property without compensation. Communism produced only poverty and hardship everywhere it has been implemented, what makes you think that Cuba would have been any different save for the embargo?

Finally, as someone who's family witnessed the horrors of Castro's Cuba firsthand, and decided to flee to America with little more than the clothes on their backs, I'm saddened to see someone who's clearly intelligent and articulate repeat such brazen lies.

The difference between Cuba and North Korea is just a matter of degree.

>one of the world's best healthcare systems

Where were you when that was proven to be propaganda? Even the cuban government banned Michael Moore's documentary because it was full of BS. Oh and the doctors are not free, the cuban government profits by charging the host government an amount per doctor (who gets a miserable share of such charge in the most "capitalista style").

All that it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.

aaaaand the NSA has tapped them in direct violation of all things democratic and good.

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