In Cuba, mystery shrouds fate of Internet cable

[Bacchus4.0]

http://news.yahoo.com/cuba-mystery-shrouds-fate-internet-cable-180553388--finance.html

HAVANA (AP) — It was all sunshine, smiles and celebratory speeches as officials marked the arrival of an undersea fiber-optic cable they promised would end Cuba's Internet isolation and boost web capacity 3,000-fold. Even a retired Fidel Castro had hailed the dawn of a new cyber-age on the island.

More than a year after the February 2011 ceremony on Siboney Beach in eastern Cuba, and 10 months after the system was supposed to have gone online, the government never mentions the cable anymore, and Internet here remains the slowest in the hemisphere. People talk quietly about embezzlement torpedoing the project and the arrest of more than a half-dozen senior telecom officials.

Perhaps most maddening, nobody has explained what happened to the much-ballyhooed $70 million project.

"They did some photo-op ... and then that scandal came out, and then it just disappeared from human consciousness," said Larry Press, a professor of information systems at California State University, Dominguez Hills, who studies Cuba, referring to foreign media reports and whispers by diplomats that several executives at state phone company Etecsa and the two senior officials in the Telecommunications Ministry were arrested last year.

[Egalitarian Thug]

1. That's the difference between Communism and whateverthehellwehavehere.

The corporate criminals in Communist (like) nations only get $70M to steal, so there's not enough left to finish the project and they go to jail.

Here, they get half a billion so there is enough to kludge together something that sort of works most of the time, so they get to keep the loot, are hailed as "job creators", and get another, even bigger contract.

[Bacchus4.0]

2. ok. well my internet works pretty well n/t

s

[Egalitarian Thug]

3. You think so because you don't live in an advanced nation. Your internet is slow and

terribly expensive. But hey, that's how you create billionaires and that's what's important.

[Bacchus4.0]

5. which "advanced" nation that lacks corruption has the fastest internet?

s

[Egalitarian Thug]

8. Lacks corruption? I thikn you missed the point. n/t

[greytdemocrat]

4. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

A senior French official told AP that Alcatel had upheld its part of the contract and whatever problems exist must be on land with the network it was meant to be attached to.

"The cable must be connected to something or it won't work," said the official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the politically sensitive project.


Sorry, Bozo Award...

[Bacchus4.0]

6. yeah, I saw that. pretty amusing n/t

s

[KharmaTrain]

7. Those 1959 Era Modems...

...take a while to adjust...but now they'll be able to deliver the full 240 baud.



As I had once heard about Cuba..."it's a worker's paradise, but the television sucks". Guess that now includes internet...