Castro's Internet III

It’s been a lot of fun watching the Castro regime and its apologists trying to explain over the past few days why the vast majority of Cubans are effectively barred from accessing the Internet.

As you'd expect, it’s the fault of those evil Americans - the “criminal” commercial embargo stops Cuba from linking to fast fibre optic cables, etc, etc.

Of course, it’s all utter crap.

But just for fun, I recommend you read this article from ZDNet News. It includes part of a transcript of comments made by a senior Cuban official during a United Nations meeting on Internet usage held in Geneva this week – and the response from an internationally-recognised IT expert.

Not just any expert, though.

Bill Woodcock is a network engineer from California who describes himself as an opponent of current US policy towards Cuba, no less.

Mr Woodcock had this to say about Internet access by Cubans: "Zero percent of Cubans are connected to the Internet. The Cuban government operates an incumbent phone company, which maintains a Web cache. Cubans who wish to use the Internet browse the government Web cache. They do not have unrestricted access to the Internet."

And the embargo?

"Ask yourself whether a Cuban Internet service provider would face any challenges in connecting to a network in the United States or in Europe," Mr Woodcock added. "And the answer is that, no, these are unregulated markets. They would face exactly the same costs as anyone anywhere else in the world."

Better still, visit El Guinero and read his hilarious account in Spanish.