Weekly Report - 7 February 2013 (WR-13-05)

CUBA | Fibre optic cable shows signs of activity. State telecommunications company, ETECSA, recently published a statement in the Communist party mouthpiece Granma, confirming that internet traffic is being carried by Cuba’s first submarine fibre-optic cable, Alba-1, which connects the island to Venezuela. According to the 24 January statement, ETECSA has been carrying international voice traffic since August 2012, while data-traffic tests have been conducted on the cable since 10 January 2013. The Granma statement is the first by the Cuban government on the progress of the cable, which was laid by France’s Alcatel-Lucent in 2011. In May last year, Venezuela’s science and technology minister, Jorge Arreaza, said “It is absolutely operational. It will depend on the Cuban government what it uses it for…That’s their sovereign matter, but we know that the cable is in full operation”.

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