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Cuba gets Google, at last

Lauren Kate Rawlins
By Lauren Kate Rawlins, ITWeb digital and innovation contributor.
Johannesburg, 28 Apr 2017
Google signed a deal with Cuba to bring Internet to the country.
Google signed a deal with Cuba to bring Internet to the country.

The Communist island in the North Atlantic Ocean now has Google data servers. The search engine giant is the first foreign Internet company to launch in the country.

This is the fruition of a deal which was signed in December. Google signed an agreement with the Cuban government to give Internet users in the country quicker access to its branded content.

The deal was signed by Eric Schmidt, chairman of Google's parent company Alphabet, and Mayra Arevich Marin, president of state telecommunications monopoly Etecsa. It granted Cubans speedy access to the Google Global Cache network, which stores content from sites like Gmail and YouTube on servers located closer to end-users.

"This deal allows Etecsa to use our technology to reduce latency by caching some of our most popular high-bandwidth content, like YouTube videos, at a local level," Google said at the time in a statement.

However, this will only affect those who already have Internet access in the country.

In 2014, Reuters reported Cuba does not allow open Internet access. Only 2.6 million out of a population of 11.2 million in 2014 had Internet access, almost entirely limited to government-run centres, foreign companies and tourist hotels.

It was also reported that most of those who do have access are only able to explore a limited, state-controlled basket of approved Web sites.

The Telegraph reports the situation has improved slightly in the last three years but is still slow and expensive to access.

"Most Cuban people are not granted permission to have Internet in their homes, and can only access it at some places of work, education facilities and at one of 240 public WiFi spots.

"The public hotspots cost $1.50 per hour of usage, while Internet caf'es charge around $4.50, which is prohibitively expensive for many Cubans, given the average monthly wage is around $25," reports The Telegraph.

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