Cuba has activated its first submarine cable early this year and we covered the island’s digital divide. That is Castro’s Cuba under US economic sanction since Kennedy’s era. Part of Cuba named Guantanamo has been under America’s control where a naval base is housed since 1903. The prison of ‘war on terror’ is also located there. It will be now connected with the mainland of USA through a submarine cable.
Pentagon has invited a US$40 million bid and the contractor will be selected in January 2014. The cable is scheduled to pump traffic from early 2016.
Ronald Bechtold, chief information officer at the Pentagon, said the cable line project would be finished in about two years and vastly improve communications between the naval base and the United States. Telephone and internet communications on the base are primitive and the signals are relayed to and from the United States by satellite, which causes delays.
Completing the undersea cable “would benefit the entire base,” Bechtold told the court. “It’s going to be for the entire island in anticipation that one day they’ll be able to extend it into mainland Cuba,” he added.
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