WCA May 2011

From the americas

80 million simultaneous phone calls: good news, Prensa Latina noted, “in a country where web pages open at the speed of molasses oozing out of a jar.” However, according to the report, to which Associated Press writer Paul Haven contributed, there is some question as to access. Shortly before the landing of the cable was celebrated, Cuba’s Deputy Information Minister Jorge Luis Perdomo told reporters at a technology conference that, for now at least, Cubans would still be able to go online solely at their workplaces and schools. Mr Perdomo said the limitations did not derive from any political concerns, but are a function of dilapidated infrastructure and the time it will take to improve it. ❖ ❖ However, it would be idle to ignore the effect on official Cuba of the US commercial, economic and financial embargo, in place since 1962. According to Prensa Latina, in the week before its account was published, bloggers began circulating a video that appears to show an Interior Ministry attaché warning a group of government employees that the Internet could be employed to mount an attack on Cuba. “We are not ‘fighting’ new technology,” he says. “But we must understand it, use it in our interest, and know what our enemy means to do with it.” The figure in the video repeatedly brings up the case of an American subcontractor detained in Cuba since December 2009 on charges of possession of satellite phones and technology for the creation of unauthorised Internet networks. Cuban prosecutors are seeking a 20-year jail term. Elsewhere in telecom . . . ❖ ❖ Huawei Technologies Co has, for some time, been engaged in a public-relations campaign in the US to counter what the Shenzhen-based phone-network equipment maker says are unsubstantiated allegations that it has close ties with the Chinese military and accepts financial support from the Chinese government. On 25 th February, Huawei took the effort up a notch, with a roughly 2,000-word appeal to Washington to investigate the claims and satisfy itself that the Chinese company poses no threat to US national security. In an open letter posted on the company’s website in China, deputy chairman Ken Hu provided details about Huawei’s tax breaks, government research grants, and its arrangement with China Development Bank to provide loans to the company’s clients. Such activities are, Mr Ken asserted, entirely consistent with global norms. A week before the open letter was posted, Huawei gave up on its projected purchase of patents from 3Leaf Systems (Santa Clara, California), to comply with a recommendation by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), the inter-agency panel that vets such transactions. Prior to 3Leaf, Huawei failed in bids to acquire companies including 3Com Corp (Marlborough, Massachusetts), in 2008; and, in 2010, 2Wire (San Jose, California) and the wireless business of Motorola (Schaumburg, Illinois).

Dorothy Fabian — Features Editor

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Wire & Cable ASIA – May/June 2011