6 ms·

What Became of the Arcos Undersea Cable Connection to Cuba? (2020)

49 points by joecool1029 5y ago

joecool1029 5y ago
Posting this because there were many reports of Internet disruptions in Cuba and HN likes stuff about underwater cables. What many may not know is that there's one major high speed link to the world through ALBA-1. This article is about the ARCOS-1 cable network in the Carribean. An extension was supposed to be added to Cuba but mysteriously was dropped around the last US presidential election. As far as I can tell this is the only recentish article about the application being withdrawn. I'm not looking to fuel partisan strife, I genuinely want to shine light on this and hope some of the HN community might know more of the story.
- MomoXenosaga 5y ago
  There is no partisan strife Biden and the Democratic party are silent on Cuba. But dig a little more and their stance is the same as the GOP.
  - squarefoot 5y ago
    Pretty sure you're right. Mccarthysm ended decades ago, but its effects are still there. We probably need to evolve for some time (centuries?) before a politician can openly speak about anything related to communism without being labeled as the devil and see their career destroyed in seconds.
    - nerdponx 5y ago
      As far as I'm aware, Communism was a "dirty word" since the Russian revolution. The obvious conspiracy theory is that those in the halls of power embarked (successfully) on a multi-decade project to suppress and discredit Communism as an acceptable political belief.
  - njjnvc 5y ago
    No, many in the GOP still agree with wetfoot/dryfoot due to the ongoing historical legacy of the failure of JFK at the Bay of Pigs. Rhetorically, to pick a couple of examples, Ron DeSantis and Marco Rubio correctly have identified the Communist regime as the cause of the unrest in Cuba. And if the age of postmodernism has taught us anything it's that rhetoric matters. AOC, self professed "trained Marxist" Patrisse Cullors, and many Democrats, instead blame all the problems in Cuba on the US embargo and forgive the regime for its many crimes, and BLM put out a statement of support for the regime. The GOP isn't unified but at least some of them seem to understand the reality of the regime there and aren't eager to kowtow because the regime claims to have universal education and healthcare.
    - nerdponx 5y ago
      We don't have comparable embargoes on nation-states whose governments have committed much more heinous crimes. Like with sanctions in the Middle East, it just hurts regular people and the government continues to not care.
- teh_klev 5y ago
  Could do with 2020 appended to the title.
- yyyk 5y ago
  > Posting this because there were many reports of Internet disruptions in Cuba and HN likes stuff about underwater cables. An unbuilt cable is unlikely to be related to current disruptions. It's much more likely the regime is using disruptions as an anti-protest tactic against the recent protests.
  - throwaway894345 5y ago
    On the subject of anti-protest tactics, I was a little surprised to see BLM come out so openly in favor of the regime that was repressing protests and criticism of the government via police brutality. I would have thought Cuba would be a slam dunk for them.
    - yardie 5y ago
      Do you have a post of this? Last I look BLM, mistakenly, believes the protests are about the embargo. I haven't seen anything from them supporting or criticizing the regime.
      - throwaway894345 5y ago
        Their social media post[0] blaming the embargo is parroting the Cuban Dictatorship’s response, and the post itself refers to the embargo as “undermining the rights of the Cuban people to choose their own government” which IMO strongly implies that the Dictatorship is the rightful government of the Cuban people. This seems like pretty clear support of the Cuban Dictatorship to me. Note that, like other communist countries, Cuba hasn’t had free elections since the Communist Party took over. So the “US undermining Cubans’ right to choose their own government” would be an absurd error—it’s very, very hard to believe BLM doesn’t know this and accidentally stumbled into rote Communist rhetoric. Similarly, it’s pretty hard to believe that the they think the US embargo is responsible for the disconnection of Internet, the police brutality toward protesters, etc or other overtly authoritarian facets of the protests. Nor the lack of medicine or food considering the embargo specifically allows those items, but Cuban policy effectively prevents Cubans from accessing those items (the government fears that it’s citizens might become sympathetic to US interests if the US is the one feeding and treating its population). Again, these are people who see “authoritarianism” in every aspect of US government and culture, and they accidentally overlooked it in Cuba? [0]: https://www.instagram.com/p/CRU5kYYp-UU/ https://www.instagram.com/p/CRU5kYYp-UU/
alexjmbarton 5y ago
Highly curious about this, anyone have a good explanation?
eganist 5y ago
Edit 3: I originally referenced https://www.submarinenetworks.com/en/systems/brazil-us/arcos-1 https://www.submarinenetworks.com/en/systems/brazil-us/arcos... which claimed the following: > The application for license for the ARCOS-1 Cuba Extension is still pending for approval. However, though this page is a good resource about the cable itself, this quote appears not to be correct. See below for the edit history containing what I think is the most likely current publicly known state of the project: --- Edit: a quick google for "arcos-1" "cuba" site:.gov yielded the following which may be relevant. I'm still parsing. https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-368065A1.pdf https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-368065A1.pdf Edit 2: from above, > By letter filed October 26, 2020, ARCOS-1 USA, Inc. and A.SurNet, Inc. (together, Applicants) notified the Commission of the withdrawal of the request to modify the license for the ARCOS-1 submarine cable system - SCL-LIC-19981222-00032, SCL-MOD-20010302-00007, and SCL-MOD-20020701-00056 - to include a new landing point in Cuba. So uh... dead in the water unless anyone finds anything more recent. That quote is more recent than the linked article.
chizhik-pyzhik 5y ago
title should have (2020)
redis_mlc 5y ago
It probably died in a national security review since both Russia and China would have an easy time tapping it in Cuba, and supporting the Communist Cuban government is not in the interest of the US. Castro (dictator for life) died, so it makes sense to destabilize Cuba as much as possible now. (For those who don't know anything about Cuba, you can't even own a private store or garage there - Castro literally socialized everything. Which is why all the business owners moved to Miami.)
firekvz 5y ago
I am not really sure of the agenda behind this post, but just a reminder that there is a submarine cable (ALBA-1) that connects Cuba and Venezuela and serves as a full time link and connects Cuba to the world and gives them FREE INTERNET through Venezuelan biggest ISP (Cantv). This free internet makes Venezuelans furious as our corrupt, dictatorship government rather give CUBA a big part of our own international connectivity that actually use that for our own connectivity/broadband. Note that we have one of the slowest internet connections in the world [1], this last 24 months, we have improved a lot (from rank 200+ to 139) due to some private ISPs finally allowed to purchase a bit more of bandwidth, but it’s still hoarded by our national ISP (gov controlled) and Cuba itself, there has been reports of the CUBA's power going as far as actually having managing positions on venezuelan national's ISP and helping Venezuela's gov on censuring our internet. [2] [3] I don’t want to get political here, but in before you start criticizing sanctions/blockade and come with sob stories, lets talk about what Cuba really is, a 60 years old dictatorship where human rights are violated everyday making every citizen life a living hell. tldr; Cuba gov controls all internet access to the island, and they get internet from Venezuela for free no matter what USA does, so they aren't really disconnected from the world because of sanctions/blockade. [1] https://www.speedtest.net/global-index/venezuela#fixed https://www.speedtest.net/global-index/venezuela#fixed [2] https://www.cubanet.org/tecnologia-2/asi-funciona-la-censura-de-internet-en-cuba-y-venezuela/ https://www.cubanet.org/tecnologia-2/asi-funciona-la-censura... [3] https://venezuelaaldia.com/2019/05/21/cantv-cubatel-costo-usd-14-611-616-cuba-controla-comunicaciones-venezolanas/ https://venezuelaaldia.com/2019/05/21/cantv-cubatel-costo-us...
- Clewza313 5y ago
  The Cuban government and intelligentsia are connected, but ordinary people are not. Until 2018, the only way for most Cubans to get online was via public wifi spots, and while there is now some 3G data connectivity, the pricing remains prohibitive: at last check 1 GB is about a week's salary.
- huntertwo 5y ago
  Also not trying to be political, I don’t believe the Cuban embargo/sanctions are due to the existence of a dictatorship. The US has happily done business with, propped up, and installed various dictatorships in the past and continues to do so as well. These dictatorships have performed atrocities similar to or worse than those that the Cuban government performs. Examples include Spain, Argentina, Chile, and perhaps Brazil in the second half of the 20th century. IMO, the US government is opposed to the proliferation of communism/socialism and for that reason maintains certain embargoes/sanctions. The current sanctions that I know of are against Venezuela, North Korea, and Cuba, all openly communist dictatorships. To conclude, sob stories aside, the existence of a dictatorship in Cuba is not a motivator for the sanctions against Cuba.
londons_explore 5y ago
Why isn't Cuba the country organising their own cable connection? There are plenty of nearish places to connect to if the US doesn't want to be involved.
- mynameisvlad 5y ago
  They do interconnect to Venezuela and Jamaica via ALBA-1. The answer to your question in general, though, is that it is very hard to do business with Cuba when a superpower disapproves of it.
- antihero 5y ago
  Pretty hard to do big projects like this when you're sanctioned by the US and no company can work with you.
  - MomoXenosaga 5y ago
    Nord Stream 2 was one of those few moments that made me proud as a European.
    - oaiey 5y ago
      Hmm.. when I remember right, we European needed to take Russian help to avoid legal troubles with the US.
    - corty 5y ago
      Not really, half the EU, especially the east, sided with the US in the matter. I think it was good that Germany didn't cave (yet), but European unity just wasn't there at all.
    - koheripbal 5y ago
      Being more reliant on Russian gas supplies because you turned off you nuclear plants made you more proud?
    - lucian1900 5y ago
      That happened due to the ongoing breakdown in the alliance between the US and Western European imperialist blocks. Sadly, it wasn’t due to some principled stance against US economic warfare.
siscia 5y ago
Maybe a little off topic, but why the US are still so hostile against Cuba? Is there any real reason or credible threat that the small island could damage the US? It seems like US is holding the grudge way too long.
- dogorman 5y ago
  I think most American politicians wouldn't care, if not for many Cuban Americans still caring a great deal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban-American_lobby#Political_influence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban-American_lobby#Political...
- blueblisters 5y ago
  Didn't Obama try normalizing the relationship until Trump came along and decided to undo it? Same thing for Iran I guess? Sometimes I feel US foreign policy is much too dependent on the whims of the current administration. Presidents should perhaps have Congress ratify/codify decisions with long-term implications, which would make it harder for the next administration to change?
  - krisoft 5y ago
    > Presidents should perhaps have Congress ratify/codify decisions with long-term implications, which would make it harder for the next administration to change? This is how it works. Lets take the JCPOA as an example. That was the Obama era nuclear deal with Iran. Because of the voting situation in Congress there was no way to get it accepted there. What could have been ratified by Congress would not have been accepted by Iran. Therefore Obama signed the deal as an executive action. He couldn’t have done that if the deal would be bidding with long term implications, so they worded the deal such that the executive of the USA had to re-affirm their commitment to the deal periodically. Trump did re-affirm it at first but when it came up again the second time he refused. In short: it works exactly as you say already. Obama just simply didn’t have the votes in Congress to push through a binding treaty.
  - joecool1029 5y ago
    Everyone knows Cuba's a major political issue for Florida. Trump admin publicly signalled support for a new cable[1], but then it was apparently dropped. Biden administration so far has been quiet on the topic. Given that this should be an executive decision, I'm curious as to what FOIA requests would turn up. [1] https://www.state.gov/cuba-internet-task-force-final-report/ https://www.state.gov/cuba-internet-task-force-final-report/
aaron695 5y ago
This blog post has a update here - https://www.circleid.com/posts/20210223-simple-suggestion-for-president-biden-regarding-the-cuban-internet/ https://www.circleid.com/posts/20210223-simple-suggestion-fo...
- joecool1029 5y ago
  Whoops, I missed it! Honestly this should be the submission as it's the most updated. So Google is now a player on this topic...
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

49 points by joecool1029 5y ago

Posting this because there were many reports of Internet disruptions in Cuba and HN likes stuff about underwater cables. What many may not know is that there's one major high speed link to the world through ALBA-1. This article is about the ARCOS-1 cable network in the Carribean. An extension was supposed to be added to Cuba but mysteriously was dropped around the last US presidential election. As far as I can tell this is the only recentish article about the application being withdrawn. I'm not looking to fuel partisan strife, I genuinely want to shine light on this and hope some of the HN community might know more of the story.

MomoXenosaga 5y ago
There is no partisan strife Biden and the Democratic party are silent on Cuba. But dig a little more and their stance is the same as the GOP.
- squarefoot 5y ago
  Pretty sure you're right. Mccarthysm ended decades ago, but its effects are still there. We probably need to evolve for some time (centuries?) before a politician can openly speak about anything related to communism without being labeled as the devil and see their career destroyed in seconds.
  - nerdponx 5y ago
    As far as I'm aware, Communism was a "dirty word" since the Russian revolution. The obvious conspiracy theory is that those in the halls of power embarked (successfully) on a multi-decade project to suppress and discredit Communism as an acceptable political belief.
- njjnvc 5y ago
  No, many in the GOP still agree with wetfoot/dryfoot due to the ongoing historical legacy of the failure of JFK at the Bay of Pigs. Rhetorically, to pick a couple of examples, Ron DeSantis and Marco Rubio correctly have identified the Communist regime as the cause of the unrest in Cuba. And if the age of postmodernism has taught us anything it's that rhetoric matters. AOC, self professed "trained Marxist" Patrisse Cullors, and many Democrats, instead blame all the problems in Cuba on the US embargo and forgive the regime for its many crimes, and BLM put out a statement of support for the regime. The GOP isn't unified but at least some of them seem to understand the reality of the regime there and aren't eager to kowtow because the regime claims to have universal education and healthcare.
  - nerdponx 5y ago
    We don't have comparable embargoes on nation-states whose governments have committed much more heinous crimes. Like with sanctions in the Middle East, it just hurts regular people and the government continues to not care.
teh_klev 5y ago
Could do with 2020 appended to the title.
yyyk 5y ago
> Posting this because there were many reports of Internet disruptions in Cuba and HN likes stuff about underwater cables. An unbuilt cable is unlikely to be related to current disruptions. It's much more likely the regime is using disruptions as an anti-protest tactic against the recent protests.
- throwaway894345 5y ago
  On the subject of anti-protest tactics, I was a little surprised to see BLM come out so openly in favor of the regime that was repressing protests and criticism of the government via police brutality. I would have thought Cuba would be a slam dunk for them.
  - yardie 5y ago
    Do you have a post of this? Last I look BLM, mistakenly, believes the protests are about the embargo. I haven't seen anything from them supporting or criticizing the regime.
    - throwaway894345 5y ago
      Their social media post[0] blaming the embargo is parroting the Cuban Dictatorship’s response, and the post itself refers to the embargo as “undermining the rights of the Cuban people to choose their own government” which IMO strongly implies that the Dictatorship is the rightful government of the Cuban people. This seems like pretty clear support of the Cuban Dictatorship to me. Note that, like other communist countries, Cuba hasn’t had free elections since the Communist Party took over. So the “US undermining Cubans’ right to choose their own government” would be an absurd error—it’s very, very hard to believe BLM doesn’t know this and accidentally stumbled into rote Communist rhetoric. Similarly, it’s pretty hard to believe that the they think the US embargo is responsible for the disconnection of Internet, the police brutality toward protesters, etc or other overtly authoritarian facets of the protests. Nor the lack of medicine or food considering the embargo specifically allows those items, but Cuban policy effectively prevents Cubans from accessing those items (the government fears that it’s citizens might become sympathetic to US interests if the US is the one feeding and treating its population). Again, these are people who see “authoritarianism” in every aspect of US government and culture, and they accidentally overlooked it in Cuba? [0]: https://www.instagram.com/p/CRU5kYYp-UU/ https://www.instagram.com/p/CRU5kYYp-UU/

alexjmbarton 5y ago

Highly curious about this, anyone have a good explanation?

eganist 5y ago

Edit 3: I originally referenced https://www.submarinenetworks.com/en/systems/brazil-us/arcos-1 https://www.submarinenetworks.com/en/systems/brazil-us/arcos... which claimed the following: > The application for license for the ARCOS-1 Cuba Extension is still pending for approval. However, though this page is a good resource about the cable itself, this quote appears not to be correct. See below for the edit history containing what I think is the most likely current publicly known state of the project: --- Edit: a quick google for "arcos-1" "cuba" site:.gov yielded the following which may be relevant. I'm still parsing. https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-368065A1.pdf https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-368065A1.pdf Edit 2: from above, > By letter filed October 26, 2020, ARCOS-1 USA, Inc. and A.SurNet, Inc. (together, Applicants) notified the Commission of the withdrawal of the request to modify the license for the ARCOS-1 submarine cable system - SCL-LIC-19981222-00032, SCL-MOD-20010302-00007, and SCL-MOD-20020701-00056 - to include a new landing point in Cuba. So uh... dead in the water unless anyone finds anything more recent. That quote is more recent than the linked article.

chizhik-pyzhik 5y ago

title should have (2020)

redis_mlc 5y ago

It probably died in a national security review since both Russia and China would have an easy time tapping it in Cuba, and supporting the Communist Cuban government is not in the interest of the US. Castro (dictator for life) died, so it makes sense to destabilize Cuba as much as possible now. (For those who don't know anything about Cuba, you can't even own a private store or garage there - Castro literally socialized everything. Which is why all the business owners moved to Miami.)

firekvz 5y ago

I am not really sure of the agenda behind this post, but just a reminder that there is a submarine cable (ALBA-1) that connects Cuba and Venezuela and serves as a full time link and connects Cuba to the world and gives them FREE INTERNET through Venezuelan biggest ISP (Cantv). This free internet makes Venezuelans furious as our corrupt, dictatorship government rather give CUBA a big part of our own international connectivity that actually use that for our own connectivity/broadband. Note that we have one of the slowest internet connections in the world [1], this last 24 months, we have improved a lot (from rank 200+ to 139) due to some private ISPs finally allowed to purchase a bit more of bandwidth, but it’s still hoarded by our national ISP (gov controlled) and Cuba itself, there has been reports of the CUBA's power going as far as actually having managing positions on venezuelan national's ISP and helping Venezuela's gov on censuring our internet. [2] [3] I don’t want to get political here, but in before you start criticizing sanctions/blockade and come with sob stories, lets talk about what Cuba really is, a 60 years old dictatorship where human rights are violated everyday making every citizen life a living hell. tldr; Cuba gov controls all internet access to the island, and they get internet from Venezuela for free no matter what USA does, so they aren't really disconnected from the world because of sanctions/blockade. [1] https://www.speedtest.net/global-index/venezuela#fixed https://www.speedtest.net/global-index/venezuela#fixed [2] https://www.cubanet.org/tecnologia-2/asi-funciona-la-censura-de-internet-en-cuba-y-venezuela/ https://www.cubanet.org/tecnologia-2/asi-funciona-la-censura... [3] https://venezuelaaldia.com/2019/05/21/cantv-cubatel-costo-usd-14-611-616-cuba-controla-comunicaciones-venezolanas/ https://venezuelaaldia.com/2019/05/21/cantv-cubatel-costo-us...

Clewza313 5y ago
The Cuban government and intelligentsia are connected, but ordinary people are not. Until 2018, the only way for most Cubans to get online was via public wifi spots, and while there is now some 3G data connectivity, the pricing remains prohibitive: at last check 1 GB is about a week's salary.
huntertwo 5y ago
Also not trying to be political, I don’t believe the Cuban embargo/sanctions are due to the existence of a dictatorship. The US has happily done business with, propped up, and installed various dictatorships in the past and continues to do so as well. These dictatorships have performed atrocities similar to or worse than those that the Cuban government performs. Examples include Spain, Argentina, Chile, and perhaps Brazil in the second half of the 20th century. IMO, the US government is opposed to the proliferation of communism/socialism and for that reason maintains certain embargoes/sanctions. The current sanctions that I know of are against Venezuela, North Korea, and Cuba, all openly communist dictatorships. To conclude, sob stories aside, the existence of a dictatorship in Cuba is not a motivator for the sanctions against Cuba.

londons_explore 5y ago

Why isn't Cuba the country organising their own cable connection? There are plenty of nearish places to connect to if the US doesn't want to be involved.

mynameisvlad 5y ago
They do interconnect to Venezuela and Jamaica via ALBA-1. The answer to your question in general, though, is that it is very hard to do business with Cuba when a superpower disapproves of it.
antihero 5y ago
Pretty hard to do big projects like this when you're sanctioned by the US and no company can work with you.
- MomoXenosaga 5y ago
  Nord Stream 2 was one of those few moments that made me proud as a European.
  - oaiey 5y ago
    Hmm.. when I remember right, we European needed to take Russian help to avoid legal troubles with the US.
  - corty 5y ago
    Not really, half the EU, especially the east, sided with the US in the matter. I think it was good that Germany didn't cave (yet), but European unity just wasn't there at all.
  - koheripbal 5y ago
    Being more reliant on Russian gas supplies because you turned off you nuclear plants made you more proud?
  - lucian1900 5y ago
    That happened due to the ongoing breakdown in the alliance between the US and Western European imperialist blocks. Sadly, it wasn’t due to some principled stance against US economic warfare.

siscia 5y ago

Maybe a little off topic, but why the US are still so hostile against Cuba? Is there any real reason or credible threat that the small island could damage the US? It seems like US is holding the grudge way too long.

dogorman 5y ago
I think most American politicians wouldn't care, if not for many Cuban Americans still caring a great deal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban-American_lobby#Political_influence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban-American_lobby#Political...
blueblisters 5y ago
Didn't Obama try normalizing the relationship until Trump came along and decided to undo it? Same thing for Iran I guess? Sometimes I feel US foreign policy is much too dependent on the whims of the current administration. Presidents should perhaps have Congress ratify/codify decisions with long-term implications, which would make it harder for the next administration to change?
- krisoft 5y ago
  > Presidents should perhaps have Congress ratify/codify decisions with long-term implications, which would make it harder for the next administration to change? This is how it works. Lets take the JCPOA as an example. That was the Obama era nuclear deal with Iran. Because of the voting situation in Congress there was no way to get it accepted there. What could have been ratified by Congress would not have been accepted by Iran. Therefore Obama signed the deal as an executive action. He couldn’t have done that if the deal would be bidding with long term implications, so they worded the deal such that the executive of the USA had to re-affirm their commitment to the deal periodically. Trump did re-affirm it at first but when it came up again the second time he refused. In short: it works exactly as you say already. Obama just simply didn’t have the votes in Congress to push through a binding treaty.
- joecool1029 5y ago
  Everyone knows Cuba's a major political issue for Florida. Trump admin publicly signalled support for a new cable[1], but then it was apparently dropped. Biden administration so far has been quiet on the topic. Given that this should be an executive decision, I'm curious as to what FOIA requests would turn up. [1] https://www.state.gov/cuba-internet-task-force-final-report/ https://www.state.gov/cuba-internet-task-force-final-report/

aaron695 5y ago

This blog post has a update here - https://www.circleid.com/posts/20210223-simple-suggestion-for-president-biden-regarding-the-cuban-internet/ https://www.circleid.com/posts/20210223-simple-suggestion-fo...

joecool1029 5y ago
Whoops, I missed it! Honestly this should be the submission as it's the most updated. So Google is now a player on this topic...

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]