Cuba: We're forced to 'finance' the Internet

Cuba: We're forced to 'finance' the Internet
Debate erupts at United Nations summit over Cuba's Net connection,
including why it's expensive and whether it's censored.
By Declan McCullagh
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
Published: November 2, 2006, 4:12 AM PST

ATHENS, Greece--A Cuba government official told a United Nations summit
here that the U.S. government was to blame for the poor Internet access
that its citizens endure.

Juan Fernandez, a government official in the Cuba's Commission of
Electronic Commerce, on Wednesday assailed the U.S. government's
economic embargo and argued that, as a result, poorer countries are
"financing" the Internet. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan appointed
Fernandez to a high-level working group two years ago.

Fernandez's only problem was that a longtime Internet engineer and
researcher was present and challenged those claims. Bill Woodcock,
research director of the nonprofit Packet Clearing House who has set up
Internet exchange points in Latin America and other developing nations,
replied by saying that the Cuban government's problems stem from its own
telecommunications monopoly and its official censorship policies.

A report published last month by the Reporters Without Borders advocacy
group says "it is forbidden to buy any computer equipment without
express permission from the authorities," and spyware "installed in all
Internet cafes automatically detects banned content." U.S. law exempts
telecommunications equipment and service from the trade embargo (click
here for PDF).

Read on for excerpts from the U.N. Internet Governance Forum's official
transcript of the exchange during the plenary session.

Juan Fernandez, Cuban government official: I'd like to remind you here
that the main obstacles to access to Internet is hunger, lack of
education, discrimination and exclusion...But once the underdeveloped
countries have undertaken this tremendous effort and sacrifice to create
the minimum conditions for them to be able to connect up to the
Internet, then they find themselves confronted with a situation whereby
they have to pay for the connection up to the Internet at the same level
as the developed countries, even though this might also be a channel
used by users in the developed countries.

Which means that you can have technical means whereby you can do away
with this paradox. And these poor countries seem to be financing (the)
Internet by this system.

So my question is specifically: What can we do to change the situation
in favor of those who are less advantaged, so far? We have to see how we
can, in fact, try to not only reduce costs but to make sure that we can
share the costs. And I don't know whether the WTO (World Trade
Organization) can be called in on this, as somebody said, or whether we
could call on the ITU (International Telecommunication Union) or what we
could do.

Ulysse Gosset, a French moderator: Well, before we go any further, what
is the number of people who are connected the on Internet in Cuba today?

Juan Fernandez: What?

Ulysse Gosset: What percentage of the citizens are connected to the
Internet, in terms of the overall population?

Juan Fernandez: Well, I really didn't want to talk about Cuba, because I
didn't want to politicize this forum too much. But you asked me, so I'll
tell you. As an awful a lot of you will be aware, Cuba is a small country.

Fifty years ago, it underwent an economic war waged on the by the most
economically powerful country in the world. Now, look at Google, for
example. If we try and get onto Google, we're told that we can't have
access. We can't buy software from Microsoft. We don't have access to
fiber optics. All of our Internet over the last few years has had to go
through satellite channels. And they're very expensive. And what are we
doing about this? Because the cost of connection is very high, we have
social appropriation of the Internet.

Ulysse Gosset: I was asking about the percentage of Cubans who were
connected.

Juan Fernandez: We don't count this, in terms of individuals who,
depending on the money in their pocket, cannot have access. People have
connection to Internet, wherever they are, in the mountains, in the
schools. More than a thousand schools have only maybe one pupil, because
when we say 100 percent in Cuba, we talk about 100 percent.

So a lot of these schools have to put up solar panels so they can have
connection. One hundred percent of our universities have Internet. All
of our research centers and companies that need it can have Internet
access. We don't prioritize individual use of Internet, not because we
don't want that; it's because we can't, because we don't have the
access, the network, because of the embargo imposed on us by the United
States.

Bill Woodcock, network engineer: I was hoping to respond to the question
about Cuba. Shall I do that?

Ulysse Gosset: Please go ahead.

Bill Woodcock: Let me preface this with, first of all, an apology for my
government's long-standing policies. I'm from Berkeley, Calif., and as
many of you who are familiar with the politics in the United States
know, this means that I am pretty much 100 percent for Cuba with regards
to the embargo and so forth.

With that preface, let me answer the question about what percentage of
Cubans are connected to the Internet. Remember that the Internet is an
end-to-end model. Zero percent of Cubans are connected to the Internet.
The Cuban government operates an incumbent phone company, which
maintains a Web cache. Cubans who wish to use the Internet browse the
government Web cache. They do not have unrestricted access to the Internet.

And the question about whether there is an inequality in Cuban access to
the global Internet, ask yourself whether a Cuban Internet service
provider would face any challenges in connecting to a network in the
United States or in Europe. And the answer is that, no, these are
unregulated markets. They would face exactly the same costs as anyone
anywhere else in the world.

Whereas an American or British or French Internet service provider
wishing to sell Internet access in Cuba would find themselves precluded
from doing so by government regulation. There's a basic incompatibility
between heavy government regulation and the free-market model upon which
the Internet is built.

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