Fiber Optics for Cuba?

It’s so bizarre to think that on Dec. 25, 1900, the first international long-distance phone call was placed between Key West, Florida and Havana, Cuba.

The call was an experiment to see whether the human voice could actually be carried over telegraph wires. Oh, and you’ll never guess the first words ever carried over international lines.

"I don’t understand you."

Ah, those delicious ironies... Once in the vanguard, Cuba lags far behind the rest of the globe in communications technology over a century later.

For instance, Cuba is now the only country in the Western Hemisphere that isn’t connected to the rest of the world by fiber optics technology, and the only thing keeping the island from total isolation is a slow, costly satellite service. But this may soon change, as a Miami-based telecom firm, TeleCuba Communications Inc. just announced plans to lay the first fiber optics cable to Cuba by 2011. That is, if Cuba agrees to allow the link-up.

If laid, the cable will be able to carry 160 million simultaneous calls, as compared to the once-functional copper cable from the 1950s that ran between Key West and the fishing village of Cojimar, Cuba, the backdrop for Ernest Hemingway’s "Old Man and the Sea." That old cable could only carry 144 simultaneous calls.

Given that Cuba is notorious for constant dropped international calls that cost $3 per minute as well as ultra-slow Internet service, fiber optics would be an absolute boon for Cuba, bringing the island up to par with the rest of the world in advanced communications. Certainly can’t beat that noise.

Photo courtesy pasukaru76 via Flickr.