31 October 2023 | For: Ministry of communications
In the report presented by Cuba against the economic, commercial and financial blockade, it refers to the damage caused by this policy between March 1, 2022 and February 28, 2023. In the case of the communications and computing sector, including telecommunications in Cuba, the economic damages and losses caused by the blockade during this period are estimated at 41 million 270 thousand 50 dollars.
The Cuban Telecommunications Company (ETECSA) continued to be the company most affected, registering a figure of 40 million 901 thousand 400 dollars in losses, which represents approximately 99.1% of the total amount of damages reported in the sector. It is noteworthy that the siege and pressure on entities that have commercial relations and others with an interest in negotiating with communications companies continues, which negatively affects the possibility of Cubans to have adequate infrastructure, greater access to Internet and computerization.
No country faces a process of technological modernization under these conditions. Several international suppliers that provided repair services to the installed technology have decided not to continue doing so, even those on which more than 50% of the current equipment depends. As in previous years, the limitations in the availability of energy carriers and the lack of fuel, derived from the restrictions imposed by the United States government on suppliers and ships that access our country, have affected the autonomy of the generating sets in the technology centers.
The blockade has also prevented Cuban and American companies from advancing in the conclusion of mutually beneficial agreements in the telecommunications sector. The signing of the contract between ETECSA and Colombus Network Limited (CNL), a subsidiary of Liberty Latin America, for the connection to the first ARCOS-1 submarine cable that would connect the US with Cuba, was pending for more than four years awaiting evaluation of the license requested by the company from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), a real example of the blockade.
For its part, on November 30, 2022, the Department of Justice published a recommendation made by the Committee on Evaluation of Foreign Participation REPORT AGAINST BLOCKING 32 in United States Telecommunications Services to the FCC, to deny the license.
The Committee's arguments included the alleged counterintelligence threat that Cuba poses to the United States and the country's designation as a State Sponsor of Terrorism. On December 13 of the same year, Florida Senator Marco Rubio sent a letter to the Chairwoman of the FCC to demand the immediate rejection of the license.
These actions put pressure on the American company, which withdrew the request. Since the arbitrary reinsertion of Cuba into the unilateral list of countries sponsoring terrorism, the impediment to receiving private express parcels from the United States has been reinforced, also affecting the Express Mail Service (EMS)1 service of the Universal Postal Union.
The limitation to access Internet broadband links continues, which impacts the speed of downloads of software, music, radio and TV programs that are transmitted in real time and access to certain sites where updates are available, many times free, from programs that have millions of users around the world. These obstacles restrict the flow of information and the massification of Internet access in Cuba, make connectivity difficult and expensive, and condition the entry of Cuban users to various virtual platforms. To cite just one example, the Adobe site is blocked for Cuba, which makes it impossible to access the help of certain programs that are online and that are not available in another format, as is the case of the most modern versions. of the Audition CS6 multitrack editor.
To these restrictions have been added others of interest that were free until recently, among them: Source Forge, WeTransfer, DELL and INTEL. Cuban representatives have faced numerous difficulties in participating in meetings and other virtual events convened by organizations of the United Nations System, given that Cuba has restricted access to several of the digital platforms used for these purposes, such as Zoom.