EuroWire November 2017

Transatlantic Cable

Martín Utreras, vice president of forecasting at eMarketer , observed that the majority of social media users in Cuba were most likely foreign tourists looking to stay connected while on vacation. † Despite Cuba’s reluctant embrace of the Internet, Google of the USA was permitted to bring servers online there for the rst time in April, becoming the rst foreign tech rm to host its own content in the island nation.

Telecom

Despite signs that Internet access is gaining in Cuba, getting online is very

far from an everyday experience for residents When, in July 2015, diplomatic relations were restored between Cuba and the United States, it was widely expected that Internet access would quickly dissipate the distance between the two peoples – only 90 nautical miles apart but politically estranged from each other for more than half a century. But it would appear that, despite the early enthusiasm of USA tech companies, the Internet has been slow to take root in Cuba. According to the Cuban National O ce of Statistics and Information (ONEI), some 4.5 million people, or roughly 40.3 per cent of the population, accessed the Internet at least once in the course of 2016. But the number of Cubans with Internet access in their homes was likely signi cantly lower. In March of last year the BBC reported an at-home Internet penetration rate of roughly ve per cent. The New York-based researcher eMarketer noted that Cuba o ers few options. State-run telecom Empresa de Telecomunicaciones de Cuba SA (ETECSA), which rst began o ering public Wi-Fi in 2015, provides 391 such spots nationwide. But, wrote Matteo Ceurvels of eMarketer : “At a cost of about $1.50 per hour access remains too expensive for most Cubans, and Internet speeds are reportedly excruciatingly slow.” Mr Ceurvels reported that ETECSA began a pilot programme in December 2016 to provide some 2,000 users in Havana, the capital, with xed broadband Internet access for a free two-month trial period. In March, ETECSA said that 358 participants in the programme subsequently signed up to pay for the service, which enables unimpressive data speeds of between 128 kilobits per second (Kbps) and two megabits per second (Mbps). (“Cuba Is on a Slow Crawl Toward Increased Internet Access,” 17 th August) During parliamentary sessions held in July, vice president Miguel Díaz-Canel acknowledged that Cuba has one of the world’s lowest Internet access rates; but he rejected the assertion that its society was “fully disconnected.” Mr Díaz-Canel claimed that social media penetration in Cuba had grown by 346 per cent in 2016 – an increase that was not readily veri able. † According to data obtained by eMarketer from the web analytics service StatCounter, Facebook is the leading social media platform in Cuba, outpacing Pinterest and Twitter.

Huawei continues to falter in the United States. But is it past caring?

Image: www.bigstockphoto.com Photographer Zsolt Ercsel

To observers of Huawei’s unavailing but unremitting e ort to gain ground in the USA the recent disclosure that the company is trimming its workforce there came as a surprise. To be sure, the Chinese gear and smartphone vendor said it was eliminating only 20 spots, or less than two per cent of its American jobs. But the sense of a change in the making had been picked up. What would, for another company, barely make the news, became in this instance a matter of interest. The rumoured cutback was even exaggerated in the media, with one outlet, citing an unnamed source, reporting in late August that Huawei was “in the process of cutting its 180-person USA workforce in half.” In fact, as noted by Colin Gibbs of Fierce Wireless , the minimal personnel cutback was plausibly attributed to “normal resourcing changes”; and, in an emailed statement to the industry site Huawei rea rmed its intention to “continue to recruit in line with the needs of [our] overall USA business.” The company further declared that its R&D, supply chain management and consumer business group operations in the USA would be una ected. (“Huawei Cutting Less Than 2% of US Jobs, Not Half,” 25 th August) Even so, the rst step backward, so to speak, was notable for a company that has been so resolute in its cultivation of the USA, despite its exclusion from any signi cant position in that market. The American animus against Huawei stems primarily from security concerns. A USA government report issued in 2012 labelled Huawei – together with the network vendor ZTE, also China-based – a potential cover for Chinese espionage. Huawei has consistently denied the allegation, but the report has largely blocked it from selling equipment to tier-one American wireless operators like Verizon and AT&T.

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November 2017