Fast but not yet free

A Miami-based company announced plans to lay the first optical communications fiber between the U.S. and Cuba. Execs at TeleCuba Communications claimed that they received special permission from the Treasury Department to install the cable which would be operational by 2011.

The only hurdles against the TeleCuba plan is getting the final okay from the Cuban government as well as constructing it faster than a similar cable planned between Venezuela and the island.

The move represents the gradual thawing of the political freeze between Washington and Havana, yet it would hardly benefit most Cubans:

Only about 2.1% of Cubans have regular access to the global internet and 11.5% to the Cuban intranet, according to the Washington-based democracy and human rights organization Freedom House.

"Bloggers can go online at government-owned internet cafes, at universities and hotels," it says.

Additionally, Cuban bloggers tend to be unduly harassed by the island’s regime. In the latest incidence, blogger Yoani Sanchez has been forbidden from traveling to the U.S. to receive a journalism award from Columbia University (CU). "The Cuban government ought to value Ms. Sanchez's work as a sign that young Cubans are ready to take Cuba into a better future,” said the dean of CU's Graduate School of Journalism to Reuters.

There could be a vast improvement in U.S.-Cuba ties by the time the TeleCuba cable is finished. Hopefully by that time the island’s people including its bloggers can have sufficient freedom of expression to take advantage of such a technological improvement.

Image- Miami New Times
Online Sources- Miami Herald, AP, BBC News, Reuters, The Latin Americanist