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| Latin America | |
| Cuba Tightens Its Control Over Internet | |
| 2004-01-10 | |
| Cuba tightened its controls over the Internet on Friday, prohibiting access over the low-cost government phone service most ordinary citizens have at home. They had any in the first place? The move could affect hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Cubans who illegally access the Internet from their homes, using computers and Internet accounts they have borrowed or purchased on the black market. Cuba’s communist government already heavily controls access to the Internet. Cubans must have government permission to use the Web legally and most don’t, although many can access international e-mail and a more limited government-controlled intranet at government jobs and schools. There goes any new pics of Salma Hayek. Now Cubans will need additional approval to access via the nation’s regular phone service. Since few Cubans are authorized to use the Internet from home - only some doctors and key government officials - the new law amounts to a crackdown on I bet they’ll still get ads for penis enlargement.
Communist Manifesto at work! E-net, the Internet service of the Cuban telephone company Etecsa, told customers in a letter Friday the new law would take effect late Saturday. It affects all other Internet service providers in Cuba as well. E-net is the largest of a handful of Internet providers in Cuba - all of them heavily monitored and controlled by the government. E-net customers who do not have the dollar phone service can keep accessing the Internet with the ordinary phone service with special cards sold at Etecsa offices, the letter says. With a careful record of names and phone numbers. Wonder if this will generate a blip over at the Democratic Underground? | |
| Posted by:Steve White |
| #12 I don't know how to get the photo onto Ranburg, Raptor, but if you're interested, the ISP just up the road from where I live, KCI.net, has a web page detailing all the glories of Fixed Wireless Internet, with a FAQ file, minimum system requirements, and whatnot. You can drop by and take a look, maybe get a feel for what's required. You can see it here, at http://www.kci.net/ . (posted as link and as text, just in case I bork this post.) Who knows, once you get the info, maybe you can bully someone at your ISP to look into providing the service. The startup costs a bit, you have to buy the wireless card and a directional antenna, but hey, I can testify that it's worth every penny! Ed. |
| Posted by: Ed Becerra 2004-1-10 8:47:18 PM |
| #11 Go ahead. I live in Rural Arizona,all I can get is is ph. lines.On a good day I get 21,500 k./ |
| Posted by: raptor 2004-1-10 4:43:52 PM |
| #10 BTW, this isn't a novel idea. One of the upcoming tech things this year will be a transmitter that will deliver the internet over a 30-mile radius. Upcoming?! Already in place, and been there for some time, Raf. Out here on the rural Colorado plains, the local ISP has been offering (for at least three years now) Fixed Wireless Broadband using standard WiFi cards and _directional_ antennas that give a range of about 20 miles. I pay $35 a month, and get a 256 kilobit connection (uplink AND down, a total bandwidth of 512K). For just $25, you get a 128K connection. (still, almost three times faster than a phone line.) And you can MAKE a directional antenna out of a Pringles can, as Bob Cringley has pointed out several times on his PBS column. I'm not sure of the ultimate range, but I suspect it's somewhere between 20 and 30 miles. The ONLY problem I see here is the old one.. radio direction finding. A few trucks with RDF gear, and Der Bearded One could track down folks violating his internet ban. Dangerous, that. Ed. (Oh, if anyone's interested, my ISP once published a map of my local area, showing just how much of it they could reach with Fixed Wireless Internet. Impressively sized chunk o' land. I'd be happy to share the pic.) |
| Posted by: Ed Becerra 2004-1-10 3:17:26 PM |
| #9 Maybe collect old laptops, jam a card in them, and give them to anyone who wants one. Cause a silicon revolution down there. Old? No way. We're all good Americans here. Let's do a contract with Dell for 1 million laptops with decent a decent battery and the Trafilo Stevenson screensaver. 1 billion $. Deliver via C-17 for an additional $200 per. Cost for receivers 1.2 billion $. Throw in a billion $ for blimps and wireless towers and viola Revolution! |
| Posted by: Shipman 2004-1-10 2:51:31 PM |
| #8 Fidel's been paying attention to what Papa UN is trying to do. |
| Posted by: Charles 2004-1-10 1:09:17 PM |
| #7 WiFi out of Guantanamo, exactly. Maybe collect old laptops, jam a card in them, and give them to anyone who wants one. Cause a silicon revolution down there. |
| Posted by: 4thInfVet 2004-1-10 12:15:23 PM |
| #6 RC, Yep. And Blimps.... Never forget the blimps. |
| Posted by: Shipman 2004-1-10 11:06:28 AM |
| #5 Why would we need to set up the Internet link for Cuba on Key West? Guantanamo Bay, folks. That's where we should start providing the Cubans with free Internet access. |
| Posted by: Robert Crawford 2004-1-10 10:43:49 AM |
| #4 Congratulations, Steve, in doubting that most Cubans have access to a "low-cost telephone service." In fact, only about 1% of Cubans have access to phones, and those who have access are screened for political desirability (the screening is far from perfect, however.) And, oh yes, this is NOT a political development in Cuba, but a technological one. Castro has always wanted absolute control over everything. It seems only now he got access to the technology to increase control over the internet. |
| Posted by: Anonymous 2004-1-10 10:08:04 AM |
| #3 Jeez. Rafael... that's not a bad idea. It's an easy thing to do, especially on a small scale. Say around Habana and Santiago... Bad news is most PCs in Cuba are pre-pci. So gonna need to comeup with a heap of ISI wirecards... ;) |
| Posted by: Shipman 2004-1-10 9:49:33 AM |
| #2 I say we place a big-ass dish in Key West, aim it south, and parachute in tons of wireless routers over Cuba. (BTW, this isn't a novel idea. One of the upcoming tech things this year will be a transmitter that will deliver the internet over a 30-mile radius.) |
| Posted by: Rafael 2004-1-10 7:07:05 AM |
| #1 With a careful record of names and phone numbers. Wonder if this will generate a blip over at the Democratic Underground? Doubtful. The DU will just pull that new meme of theirs out of storage. You know, the one about the "common man" being "too stupid" to be able to or trusted to vote? If they even comment on it at all - which I doubt - someone will no doubt deliver a speech/screed on how the average Cuban citizen is too stupid and has been too polluted by American popular culture to be trusted to use the Internet safely, and how the common rabble must be monitored for their own safety. Ed. |
| Posted by: Ed Becerra 2004-1-10 3:03:11 AM |