Cuban undersea cable politics

Undersea cables between the U. S. and Cuba have long been intertwined with politics. 

In 1887, The New York Times reported on the inauguration of a cable in support of the Cuban insurgents fighting for independence from Spain -- a precursor to the Spanish-American war. Phone service between the U.S. and Cuba began in 1921 with AT&T's installation of an undersea cable and AT&T dominated international telephony to Cuba until the 1990s.

In 1994, WilTe1 applied for permission to construct a 210-kilometer, 2.5-gigabit fiber optic cable that would have had roughly 41 times the then-authorized capacity, but they never received approval for an Internet cable.

In 1966 Sprint established a wireless link from Florida to Cuba, providing Cuba with its first Internet connection with funds from the U. S. National Science Foundation International Connections Program. 

When President Obama relaxed relations with Cuba, Daniel Sepulveda, who led two U. S. government delegations to Cuba, said there were at least a half-dozen proposals — from U. S. and non-U. S. companies — to construct an undersea cable between the US and Cuba. The most promising proposal was for a 56-kilometer link between the existing ARCOS cable, which connects to southern Florida, and Cuba. The proposal was submitted in August 2018 and the FCC deemed it acceptable for expedited 45-day processing, but nothing happened until Trump established a committee to consider the security risks of the cable. This month the committee advised the FCC to deny the politically hot proposal. 

Within a week, ETECSA, Cuba's state-owned telecommunication monopoly, and the French telecommunication company Orange announced an agreement to construct a 2,470-kilometer cable connecting Cuba and the Caribbean Island of Martinique. At the announcement ceremony officials of ETECSA and Orange said technical work had already begun and the permits for the cable had been granted. This was clearly planned in advance and the announcement was triggered by the decision on the ARCOS cable. (I wonder if the topic came up when President Biden and Prime Minister Macron met recently).

As shown here, Cuba currently has undersea cable connections to Venezuela and Jamaica (red) and a U. S. owned cable (green) between Guantanamo and Florida. (There has been discussion of giving the Cable to Cuba someday). 

The new Arimao cable will run from Schoelcher, Martinique to Arimao Beach in the Cienfuegos Province on Cuba's south coast and will connect to Havana and other Cuban locations over the domestic backbone. They have already begun laying the cable, which will take around three weeks and it is expected to be ready for service in 2023. Its capacity is listed as "unknown."

The Arimao cable will improve service and resilience in Cuba, but approving the ARCOS cable would have been a better solution for the following reasons:

• It would have improved the standing of the U. S. in the region and the world. The UN General Assembly has voted on a resolution calling for the end of the U. S. embargo on Cuba every year since 1992 (except in 2020 due to COVID). This year 184 nations voted for the resolution, Colombia, Ukraine, and Brazil abstained and only the U. S. and Israel voted no.
• The 56-kilometer ARCOS cable would have been cheaper and a little faster than the 2,470-kilometer cable. (I do not know how the cable is being financed, but ETECSA and Orange are listed as owners).
• The cable would already be in service.
• The cable would have landed on the north side of the island at Cojimar, a district of Havana, the source and destination of heavy traffic, lightening the load on the Cuban backbone and improving latency.
• It may have improved U. S.-Cuba relations.

In my opinion, this was a lost opportunity.

Update 12/18/2022

Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez tweeted the following after the Cuba-Martinique undersea cable was announced:

Establishing a submarine cable connection between Florida and Cuba would be a positive step for both countries and would expand Internet access for Cubans. Denying it contradicts the position declared by the US government in May 2022. (original in Spanish)

Why did he post that at this time? Was it to make it clear that the U. S., not Cuba, had stopped the ALBA cable link? What impact would a third international link have?

Update 2/7/2023

ETECSA president Tania Velázquez Rodríguez said the current ALBA-1 cable is saturated and the new Arimao cable has a tentative go-live date of next April. Experts on Twitter doubt that the cable will be ready for service that soon. The expected capacity of the cable is unknown, but if the ALBA-1 cable is saturated, it should improve Cuban international access, 

What became of the ARCOS undersea cable connection to Cuba?

Will Trump kill the proposal before the election?

Proposed 56km link between the
ARCOS undersea Cable and Cuba

Cuba's primary connection to the global Internet is through the ALBA-1 undersea cable linking landing points on the south-east shore of the island to Venezuela and Jamaica; however, the bulk of Cuban traffic originates in Havana which is on the north-west coast. Traffic from Havana and other cities in the west travels over a backbone to reach the cable landing points. A landing point near Havana would reduce the load on the backbone, speeding connections, providing redundancy, and saving capital investment.

At one time, there seemed to be bipartisan support in the US for improving Cuban Internet access. During his second term, President Obama pursued detente with Cuba and much of that effort was focused on the role of the Internet and undersea cable connectivity was part of the plan. Daniel Sepulveda, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State and U.S. Coordinator for International Communications and Information Policy, who led two US government delegations to Cuba during the Obama administration, said there were at least a half-dozen proposals — from US and non-US companies — to construct a north-south undersea cable between the US and Cuba. There had even been discussion of one day allowing Cuban access to the US cable at Guantanamo, GTMO-1.

At first, Trump seemed to agree -- consider the following timeline:

• October 20, 2017, The State Department issued National Security Presidential Memorandum, NSPM-5, stating that it was our policy to "Amplify efforts to support the Cuban people through the expansion of internet services" and directing government departments and agencies "to examine the technological challenges and opportunities for expanding internet access in Cuba."
• January 22, 2018, The State Department established a Cuba Internet Task Force "to examine technological challenges and opportunities for expanding internet access in Cuba." (Disclosure -- The Task Force formed two sub-committees and I was a member of both).
• July 23, 2018, The consortium that owns the ARCOS cable applied to construct a branch from the cable to an ETECSA supplied cable landing spot in Cojimar, Cuba.
• August 10, 2018, The FCC found the application "to be acceptable for filing and subject to the streamlined processing procedures" obligating them to take action "within forty-five (45) days" unless upon "further examination" the application is "deemed ineligible for streamlined processing."

Well, it seems the application must have been deemed ineligible since as far as I know nothing happened until earlier this month when The Committee for the Assessment of Foreign Participation in the United States Telecommunications Services Sector (CAFPUSTSS), which Trump established in an executive order on April 4, 2020, notified the FCC that it is planning to conduct 120-day security reviews of the ARCOS application.

I reached out to the FCC and the attorney who filed the request for the cable branch to ask why the application had not been acted upon but got no reply. I can think of two possible explanations:

• Trump changed his policy with respect to Cuban Internet connectivity without, as far as I know, telling anyone.
• Trump held this application up in order to grab a Florida headline between now and the election when the CAFPUSTSS rejects the application showing how tough he is on Cuba in an effort to win Cuban and Venezuelan votes.

I'm unfamiliar with FCC procedures and workflow -- is there another explanation?

Finally, note that on March 15, 2018, Deep Blue Cable Inc. applied for a Caribbean cable with 19 landing points. While none of those were in Cuba, they planned a second phase with two Cuban landing points, but the Deep Blue application was withdrawn on November 11, 2019.

Update Nov 30, 2020:

Denise Coca, FCC Division Chief, informed me that the ARCOS-1 application had been withdrawn on October 20, 2020, about two weeks before the election. When asked why the FCC had taken so long to process the application, she did not answer.

I wonder whether this might be re-submitted to the Biden FCC. Since the administration sought Cuban rapprochement during his time as Vice President, I imagine Biden would favor the link. One can argue that doing so would be a net political win among Florida voters. Would Cuban president Díaz-Canel approve it? It would reduce traffic on the Cuban backbone and improve international connectivity, but might be construed as a security threat and neutralize one of his complaints against the US.

Update 12/2/2022

The CAFPUSTSS has finally finished the "120-day" study they began on April 4, 2020, and they recommend that the FCC deny the ARCOS application. The delay and the conclusion reek of politics. For a discussion and criticism of the ruling, click here.

Telegeography report: International Internet capacity grows to 77 Tbps

Telegeography has published new statistics on global Internet capacity and utilization for fans of the "big picture." (Click the chart to enlarge).

Total international capacity is up to 77 Tbps, a 40% increase over last year. Average international internet traffic grew 35% in 2012, down from 39% in 2011, and peak traffic grew 33%, compared to the 57% in 2011.

The growth rate is slowing due to caching in content delivery networks and increasing saturation of broadband markets in developed nations, but broadband adoption in developing nations, the spread of Internet video and increased mobile connectivity will fuel growth for many years to come.

You can drill down for details on individual cables on this interactive map.

we've come a long way since the first undersea cable in 1858.

State of the Internet - the Official Akamai Internet Traffic Report for Q1 of 2012

I am attracted to the big picture -- studies of the global diffusion of the Internet. For example, Telegeography tracks the spread of the physical infrastructure in the form of undersea cables and Akami tracks use and traffic in their quarterly reports on the State of the Internet.

Akami's report for the first quarter of 2012 is just out. It is a detailed report, but a couple of big picture items caught my attention.

Akami saw a 6.0% increase in the number of unique IP addresses connecting to their global content distribution network over the previous quarter, and the global average connection speed was 2.6 Mbps.

They also noted the continued growth of mobile data, which passed mobile voice during the fourth quarter of 2009.

Check the full report for a lot more of this sort of thing and to drill down into the details.

For old timers, let me throw in links to a couple of earlier papers on Internet diffusion by my colleagues and me:

An Internet Diffusion Framework, CACM
The State of the Internet: Growth and Gaps, ISOC 2000

Telegeography's 2012 undersea cable map

Telegeography's 2012 interactive undersea cable map is out. (Maps like this depict the Earth's nervous system. You and I and the servers are the synapses).

This version is missing the direct interaction of the previous version, in which you could click on a cable or landing point to see its characteristics, but it is accompanied by informative figures showing landing stations, pricing trends, construction cost, used international bandwidth, lit capacity, capacity growth and latency.

For example, the lit capacity figure is shown here. Global lit capacity (grey) is 16,020 Gb/s, of which only 7,863 is used (red). Most of that, 6,189 Gb/s is used for Internet traffic. Private networks use another 1,658 Gb/s and switched voice only 15.

I love maps like this -- they show us the big picture. For perspective, compare today's map with that of the US National Science Foundation network in 1986. (Those are 64kbs links).

Undersea cables

We discuss backbone connectivity, including udersea cables. The first undersea cable carried telegraph traffic between New York and London in 1858.



Today, undersea cables have a combined capacity of over 7 terabits per second, as shown in this map:



The map also shows the site of a recent cable cut off the Egyptian coast. The cut was attributed to a ship dragging its anchor, and repairs are underway, but some wonder if it may have been cut intentionally.

Undersea cables are high-capacity components of a rapidly growing global nervous system. (You might think of the connected people and computers as being like neurons). You can read the story of the construction of the FLAG cable in an epic article from Wired Magazine entitled Mother Earth Mother Board.

You can get an idea of the history and importance of undersea cables in Arthur C. Clarke's "How the World was One" or check this Web site on the history of Atlantic and other cables.

Satellite links also carry intercontinental traffic -- how does their speed, capacity, latency, and ease of deployment compare with undersea cables?