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Cubans are eager to get more online access. But will their government permit it? Anchor Marco Werman speaks with Robert Faris of Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society about why Cubans are having such a tough time logging on.

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MARCO WERMAN: So plenty of thoughts and opinions to blog about on this side of the Florida straits. But what about the other side. Robert Faris is research director at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University and perhaps there’s a blogastroika in Miami. What about in Cuba Robert Faris?

ROBERT FARIS: It’s certainly opening up a little bit. Those people that are able to find their way onto the internet are blogging out of Cuba but it’s very, very limited compared to almost any other country in the world. Cuba has very, very little bandwidth and is able then to ration its access to the internet and very, very few people have access to the internet as a result.

WERMAN: And what does it look like on the ground? I mean how do Cubans in Cuba get online now? Are there cyber cafes in Havana? Do they go to the international hotels to get access?

FARIS: A little bit of both. The access at the international hotels is one of the few points where you can get to the internet in its entirety but they try to keep Cubans out of there. They’re primarily for western visitors. There are cyber cafes and they have a much narrower version of the internet that’s available there. It’s mostly intranet within Cuba itself.

WERMAN: And what is the Cuban government’s official or stated position on internet access for its people?

FARIS: There’s a couple versions. One is they give access to their people as much as practical given their bandwidth. But that the reason more people aren’t online and aren’t accessing the internet at large is because of the United States policies towards Cuba and not the Cuban policies themselves.

WERMAN: So what is Washington’s position then? Is the Obama Administration keen to have say for example fiber optics go to Cuba?

FARIS: I’m not sure yet. I haven’t heard from them. I hope that they are. But the US policies towards Cuba have been formed largely by the Helms-Burton Act which curtails commercial activity with Cuba and that’s prevented Cuba from connecting to a fiber optic cable which means that the nation of Cuba probably has less bandwidth than Harvard University. Everything is via satellite. And so the Cuban government has that excuse. It can say well we just don’t have the bandwidth. We’re not able to put people online. Where as the US government is pointing fingers at Cuba and saying well you’re not giving people enough access to the internet.

WERMAN: Well let’s take a real case example. We heard today that a small Miami-based company called TeleCuba Communications says it’s been granted a license by the US Treasury Department to install a fiber optic cable between Key West and Havana. And I guess they still have to get permission from the Cuban government. But what are your thoughts on that? I mean will Cubans actually have high speed internet and cable TV from Key West in a few years?

FARIS: I haven’t heard official word back from the State Department so I don’t know if they do in fact have authorization to put in a cable. If they have that’s a great leap forward and I would applaud that. What the Cuban government will do with that? I’m not sure. I think it will put them in an awkward situation in that they wouldn’t be able to blame the US government anymore if the US government dropped that policy of preventing fiber going to the island. There’s a few things they could do. They could provide people access to the internet and open it up to things. They could also install filters like we see in a lot of countries around the world. I guess the irony in all this is that there are so many high capacity cables that are running around the island of Cuba. The things going from the Caribbean to the United States, from the Yucatan in Mexico to the United States. These cables are just sitting off the shorelines of Cuba and they could have been tapped into many, many years ago.

WERMAN: I’ve got to say when we say Cuba and online we’re probably thinking political bloggers and people saying things bad about the government there but aren’t Cubans searching for the same things that the rest of us are searching for?

FARIS: Oh they certainly. And among the people that are online a fairly small minority are really political junkies who are looking to get those kinds of things. So the lost educational opportunities and healthcare opportunities, and healthcare opportunities, and commercial opportunities given the access to the internet are profound.

WERMAN: Alright we’ll leave it there. Robert Faris, research director at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard. Thank you so much.

FARIS: My pleasure.

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