Cuba…Today that is the country we’re going to talk about. Well, everyone knows that Cuba is an island country situated in the Caribbean, consisting of the island of Cuba, the largest and second-most populous island of the Greater Antilles, the island of Isla de la Juventud, and several adjacent small islands. The country appears to be a mixture of cultures sourced historically from the aboriginal Taíno and Ciboney peoples, the period of Spanish colonialism, the introduction of African slaves and its proximity to the United States. And surely the culture was influenced by the emigrants who came to Cuba in different periods of time such as French, Portuguese, Italians, Russians, British, Greeks, African, Kongo, Chinese, Vietnamese, Pakistani, Jews, Lebanese, Palestinians, Syrians, Haitians, Jamaicans. As for the economy of Cuba, it’s a largely state-controlled, centrally planned economy controlled by the Cuban government, with the significant foreign investments and enterprises on the other hand. So, how can the Internet and related technologies develop in the island country with such a bright heterogeneous population and contradictory economy?

According to the statistics, Cuba occupies the last place in Latin America for both mobile phone and Internet penetration. The government has blamed the embargo for the country’s poor telecom development, as the difficult relationship with the USA prevented the implementation of submarine fibre-optic cables; thus, Cuba has had to rely almost exclusively on satellites for international connectivity. But private citizens are prohibited from buying computers or accessing the Internet without special authorization; foreigners may access the Internet in large hotels but are subject to firewalls; some Cubans buy illegal passwords on the black market or take advantage of public outlets to access limited email and the government-controlled "intranet". Etecsa, controlled 73% by the government and 27% by Telecom Italia, holds a monopoly in both fixed and mobile services. It offers GSM, TDMA, and AMPS services through its subsidiary Cubacel.

So, how many people in the country have an access to the Internet? Let’s turn to the statistics. According to internetworldstats.com in 2000 just 60,000 or 0.5% of citizens had an access, however in 2007 their number has increased to 240,000 or 2,1% of the population, that is a 4 times growth. In 2008 there were 1,310,000 users (https://www.cia.gov) – that is a significant, almost a 5.5 times growth during the period of just a couple of years! That sounds unbelievable...but that’s truth. 

Actually it can easily be explained: Cuba strives not to stay behind and to keep up the modern world, so it uses all the power to develop in all spheres, especially in Internet and e-technologies. 

Today, to improve Internet technologies and make it more accessible for people, Cuba and Venezuela are jointly working in the setting up the underwater cable at ALBATEL, the telecommunications company with the ALBA Integration project. The project supposed to be ready by 2010: two companies are working at the construction of the optic fiber cable, the joint Cuban-Venezuelan company Telecomunicaciones Gran Caribe and the Chinese-French Alcatel Shanghai Bell. The optic fiber cable will supposedly connect a point of Venezuela’s Caribbean area to the Cuban eastern province of Santiago de Cuba. The underwater cable will provide the larger connection capacity and higher quality service; the project is also important for the sovereignty of Cuba as well as Venezuela in international communications.

It has recently become known that in March over 600 computer clubs are starting new courses. That means the centers will teach the basic courses on software and electronics, open-code platforms. The program also includes courses for people with disabilities and elders.
Courses generally last four months but there are others for seven, 10, 15 or 20 days, according to users' needs.
These program are totally free and the main aim is to bring an information technology culture to the community, especially for children and youth.


By the way, Cuba’s sites are generally registered under the .cu domain. Do you know how much will it cost you, if, for instance, you’d like to create a site in the zone of .cu domain? Well, not too little actually. You’ll be charged $999 for two years contract and the same amount for the following updating (or renewing) in two years. (source: http://www.rwgusa.com)
 Nowadays Cuba is developing a strategy to encourage e-trade, as it has been recently announced by Cuban Foreign Trade Minister during the opening session of an International E-Commerce Workshop, carried out in Havana. It was stressed that the initiative is being developed by skilled specialists trained in Cuba during the past 50 years. 

Cuba is working on the legal basis and testing of a Public Key Infrastructure (PKI), a set of hardware, software, policies, and procedures needed to creating, managing, storing, distributing, and revoking digital certificates. Minister intends to implement setting of showrooms online, as well as the development of software programs to update Cuban enterprises inventories, that will contribute to the participation of Cuban commerce on the web. 

As part of initiatives, mechanisms will be established to make electronic payments, and software will be installed to update the companies' inventories.

Projects include the so-called telebank, which is used to pay such services as electricity, phone, water and traffic tickets. 
Cuba has computer experts and the possibility to design software to make those operations easier. 

Naturally Cuba uses all the most popular international e-payment systems. However it’s has its own online system that providing e-commerce services - Telebanca. Telebanca system is Cuba’s own payment system through which citizens can pay for different services like utility bills, traffic fines and others making the Cuban people’s everyday life easier.

However, there are obstacles to e-commerce in Cuba, due to the economic, commercial and financial restrictions implemented by the US government against the island nation. Actually new technologies could provide equal access to information from any part of the island, but Cuba suffers from connectivity limitations as a result of the US economic blockade of the island. The US blockade kept against Cuba for nearly 50 years limits access to bandwidth required for efficient data transmission. All higher education centers in the country are connected to the ministry hub, which enables full access to text books used in different careers, in total more than 80,000 entries created by Cuban and foreign authors.

But we have a firm belief that Cuba will overcome all the existing obstacles and difficulties on its way to the progress and Internet and e-commerce development: it has already done a huge step in its development and doesn’t intend to stop…