Ger­ard Best

Cu­ba will host a sig­nif­i­cant gath­er­ing of the re­gion­al In­ter­net com­mu­ni­ty next year.

The Ha­vana Con­ven­tion Cen­tre will host the 25th meet­ing of the In­ter­net Ad­dress­es Reg­istry for Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean (Lac­nic) from May 2 to 6, 2016.

"Ha­vana will be the cap­i­tal of the Latin Amer­i­can and the Caribbean In­ter­net Com­mu­ni­ty in May 2016," said Jorge Vil­la, man­ag­er of the na­tion­al uni­ver­si­ty net­work at the Cuban Min­istry of High­er Ed­u­ca­tion, told the T&T Guardian.

The Cuban State Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Com­pa­ny ETEC­SA is the of­fi­cial host of the event. Cu­ba host­ed the fifth Lac­nic meet­ing in 2003. "This will be the sec­ond time that Lac­nic flies to Ha­vana for its meet­ings. It will be a great op­por­tu­ni­ty for the Caribbean com­mu­ni­ty to par­tic­i­pate in a bet­ter way in this com­mu­ni­ty," Vil­la said. Lac­nic ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor Os­car Rob­les made the of­fi­cial an­nounce­ment at the end of lac­nic 23, held in Li­ma, Pe­ru from May 18 to 22. Lac­nic 24 will be held in Bo­go­ta, Colom­bia in Sep­tem­ber of this year.

The news was greet­ed with loud ap­plause by hun­dreds of del­e­gates, who had gath­ered for the week­long con­fer­ence to dis­cuss ques­tions of In­ter­net gov­er­nance and oth­er is­sues af­fect­ing the evo­lu­tion of the re­gion­al In­ter­net.

For Cu­ba, it comes as the lat­est in a se­ries of sig­nif­i­cant de­vel­op­ments in its nascent telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions sec­tor. Un­til 2012, most In­ter­net users on the Caribbean's largest is­land had on­ly had lim­it­ed band­width via satel­lite con­nec­tion.

The Gene­va-based In­ter­na­tion­al Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Union (ITU) ranks Cu­ba low­est in the Amer­i­c­as in telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions de­vel­op­ment. It says about 25 per cent of Cubans have ac­cess to the In­ter­net.

In ear­ly 2013, the Cuban gov­ern­ment opened sev­er­al cy­ber­cafes, which have be­come the pri­ma­ry point of ac­cess to the In­ter­net for lo­cal users. The Cuban pub­lic most­ly has State-con­trolled In­ter­net ac­cess in schools and work­places.

Cuban of­fi­cials have been promis­ing bet­ter In­ter­net ser­vice for years but have cit­ed the US eco­nom­ic em­bar­go and po­lit­i­cal ag­gres­sion as rea­sons for its stunt­ed de­vel­op­ment.

The US rap­proche­ment to­ward Cu­ba in late 2014 came with added pres­sure for the is­land to has­ten the mod­erni­sa­tion of its telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions in­fra­struc­ture. The US made telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions equip­ment, tech­nol­o­gy and ser­vices among the first ex­emp­tions to the em­bar­go af­ter Wash­ing­ton and Ha­vana an­nounced last De­cem­ber that they would re­store diplo­mat­ic re­la­tions.

In Feb­ru­ary, Cu­ba's First Vice Pres­i­dent Miguel Di­az-Canel pledged on­line ac­cess for all, and ac­knowl­edged that the coun­try can­not de­vel­op with­out bet­ter con­nec­tiv­i­ty to the In­ter­net. Fol­low­ing the Vice Pres­i­dent's speech, there have been sev­er­al pos­i­tive de­vel­op­ments in the form of dig­i­tal lit­er­a­cy train­ing cen­tres, wire­less hotspots and a project to in­crease ac­cess to fixed and mo­bile telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions ser­vices, Vil­la told the Guardian in an ex­clu­sive in­ter­view.

In March, New Jer­sey-based IDT Corp. be­came the first U. com­pa­ny to strike a long-dis­tance deal with Cu­ba since the Oba­ma ad­min­is­tra­tion's rap­proche­ment. Pre­vi­ous­ly, US car­ri­ers were un­able to make di­rect calls to Cu­ba and had to use a non-US car­ri­er for the fi­nal con­nec­tion.

Lat­er that month, a US del­e­ga­tion trav­elled to Ha­vana to ex­plore busi­ness op­por­tu­ni­ties for telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions com­pa­nies. In May, French com­pa­nies in­clud­ing telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions cor­po­ra­tion Or­ange ac­com­pa­nied Pres­i­dent Fran­cois Hol­lande on the first vis­it by a Eu­ro­pean leader since Span­ish Prime Min­is­ter Fe­lipe Gon­za­lez vis­it­ed in 1986.