Google exec says Cuban internet is old and censored

Posted on Tuesday, 07.01.14



Google exec says Cuban internet is old and censored

BY JUAN O. TAMAYO

JTAMAYO@ELNUEVOHERALD.COM



Fresh from a visit to Havana, Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt has

described the Internet in Cuba as "trapped in the 1990s," heavily

censored and with a weak infrastructure dominated by Chinese equipment

because of the U.S. trade embargo.



The embargo "makes absolutely no sense to U.S. interests," Schmidt wrote

in a column. "If you wish [Cuba] to modernize the best way to do this is

to empower the citizens with smart phones [there are almost none today]

and encourage freedom of expression and put information tools into the

hands of Cubans directly."



Schmidt's column was posted on Google and dated Sunday, shortly after he

and three other company executives returned from a brief trip to Cuba,

where they met with government officials, blogger Yoani Sánchez and

visited the Information Sciences University in Havana.



The trip had "the goal of promoting a free and open Internet," he wrote,

without detailing how the visitors tried to do that in a country where

the government controls all access to the Internet and blocks "hostile"

pages. "The Internet is heavily censored," he acknowledged.



"The Internet of Cuba is trapped in the 1990s. About 20-25% of Cubans

have phone lines … and the cell phone infrastructure is very thin," he

wrote, adding that only 3-4 percent of Cubans "have access to the

Internet in internet cafes and in certain universities."



Information is passed hand to hand in USB flash drives and other digital

memories in "a type of sneakernet," the column noted, and youths have

been assembling mesh networks of Wi-Fi routers for file sharing and

private messaging.



Turning to U.S. policies on Cuba, Schmidt wrote that the

half-century-old embargo had opened the doors to Chinese equipment. "As

U.S. firms cannot operate in Cuba, their Internet is more shaped by

Cuban narrow interests than by global and open platforms," he argued.



The embargo and keeping Cuba on the U.S. State Department's list of

nations that support international terrorism "defy reason," Schmidt

wrote. "There are dozens of countries we call our allies and we are free

to travel to that present much worse threats and concerns to the U.S."



U.S. restrictions "make even less sense when you find out that Cuba

imports a great deal of food from the U.S. as compassionate trade. The

food imports to Cuba are important but so is importation of tools to

Cuba for the development of a knowledge economy," the Google chief said.



"Walking around [Havana] it's possible to imagine a new Cuba, perhaps a

leader of Latin America education, culture, and business," he wrote.

"Cuba will have to open its political and business economy, and the U.S.

will have to overcome our history and open the embargo. Both countries

have to do something that is hard to do politically, but it will be

worth it."



Schmidt seemed to be less clear on Cuba's domestic politics, misspelling

the name of Cuban ruler Raúl Castro as "Raoul" and writing that cars and

houses, which can be bought and sold relatively freely since 2011, "are

beginning to be tradeable with restrictions."



He wrote that "the two most successful parts of the Revolution, as they

call it," are the free and universal healthcare and "the clear majority

of women in the executive and managerial ranks in the country.



"The least successful part of the Revolution has been economic

development [not surprisingly] and it appeared to us a drop off in

tourism and recent farm issues have made things somewhat worse in Cuba,"

Schmidt wrote in his column.



"We were told that there is a fight between more liberal and

conservative leaders under Castro, and someone said that the military

was becoming more involved in economic development," he said. "A number

of people said the eventual model of Cuba would be more like China or

Vietnam than of Venezuela or Mexico."



Schmidt also wrote that the U.S. terror list also included North Korea,

Syria, Iran and "North Sudan." North Korea was removed from the list in

2008, and there is no North Sudan, just the countries of Sudan and South

Sudan.



Source: "Google exec says Cuban internet is old and censored - Cuba -

MiamiHerald.com" -

http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/07/01/4212761/google-exec-says-cuban-internet.html