2023-04-29 11:38:20
Cuba has begun testing a new undersea fiber optic cable connecting the island to Martinique. This will expand the capacity of the existing Alba 1 line with Venezuela. As the state telephone provider ETECSA announced, the data volume was increased by 17 percent in the first tests. Extensive optimization work on the networks will follow in the coming weeks and months, with the help of which the capacity of the cable should be used as best as possible.
With the commissioning of its 4G network in autumn 2019, Cuba temporarily had the second fastest Internet in Latin America. However, the joy only lasted for a short time: due to the massive increase in the number of users as a result of several price reductions, the Alba-1 fiber optic cable soon reached its limits. Today, the speed leaves a lot to be desired in many places: “Users had a lot of problems surfing the web and in some cases had to put their device on flight mode. Slow speeds, even on 4G, continue to affect the quality of service,” said ETECSA Vice President of Network Operations Esther Hidalgo Rodríguez. These issues should be resolved over the course of the year.
With the “Arimao” cable, which was laid in cooperation with the French mobile phone provider Orange, Cuba is for the first time directly connected to the French overseas department of Martinique and thus to the European Union. With the 2470km long line, the endpoint of which is in the western Cuban city of Cienfuegos, the country’s grid capacity is to be “expanded and diversified”, ETECSA announced when construction began in December 2022. As of 2013, Cuba was only connected to the WWW via Venezuela’s Alba-1 cable, after the United States continued to refuse to allow the island to be connected to one of its many undersea cables.
In order to be able to fully utilize the bandwidth of the cable, however, further optimization of the network is required. The signal transport layers of the mobile network have recently been replaced by new devices because the existing ones could no longer be expanded. “In addition, the access layer has expanded significantly through optimizations in coverage and cell switching as well as the use of new frequencies,” explained Hidalgo. A core element of the optimization is the increased use of the 2100 Mhz frequency range, which has so far taken place in the regions of Havana, Matanzas (provincial capital and Varadero) and Cienfuegos. With the gradual conversion from analogue to digital television transmission, the 700 Mhz frequency band will also be released for 4G use by region. Pinar del Río, Artemisa and the Isle of Youth started here. Since the signal range is higher in the 700 Mhz frequency range, rural areas in particular benefit from poor network coverage. A total of 47 new 2G cells, 227 3G cells and 1521 4G cells were installed over the course of this year, which means that the capacities of the 4G network, which is now mainly used, have increased by a quarter.
Overall, with the previous network adjustments, 2.2 million of Cuba’s 6.7 million mobile data users can now surf the web at full power at the same time. The expansion should continue. Work is currently underway to also use the 900 Mhz frequency band in “areas with particularly high data traffic,” says Hidalgo. The test operation for this has recently been running in Havana’s La Lisa district, where three frequencies (1800 Mhz, 2100 Mhz and 900 Mhz) are being used simultaneously with 4G for the first time. Last but not least, this should also significantly improve reception inside buildings, a frequent criticism of Cuban Internet users.
However, the expansion of home connections is still progressing slowly, currently only seven percent of Cuban households have a DSL connection. The main problem is the high costs: Since the currency reform in 2021, the Internet has been paid for in the local currency at moderate prices (1GB á 100 pesos, approx. 80 euro cents), but the expansion of the fiber optic cable requires larger investments in foreign currency, which the provider currently has not available. An interim solution could be LTE routers that can be operated via mobile data and the introduction of which has already been announced in recent years. In any case, the latest optimizations in connection with the new cable indicate that Cuba is getting ready for another “Internet wave” of the mobile network.
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