• Submitted by: manso
• Business and Economy
• 01 / 25 / 2011

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January 2011. Industry Trends And Developments. Cuba is set to finally be connected to the information superhighway as the deployment of a fibre-optic submarine cable gets under way. A boat carrying the 1,630km cable arrived in Venezuela on January 16 and the cable deployment should take two weeks to reach Siboney in Cuba and be operational by June or July 2011.

BMI believes this an exciting development in the Cuban telecoms market, although we caution that growth is unlikely to take off significantly for a number of reasons.

One of the main barriers to strong broadband take-up in Cuba is the fact that the majority of inhabitants have not had access to the service previously and never used the internet, so generating interest will take time.

In addition, few Cubans have PCs or laptops and, while BMI believes this creates a strong potential market for PC sales, the high cost of services means PC growth is likely to be some way off. Because owning a mobile phone is beyond the reach of many, buying a PC or laptop will not be a consideration for the vast majority of the population, BMI believes, even with the cable offering a connection speed 3,000 times faster than existing cables.

Source:www.telecomsinsight.com/file/95754/cubans-closer-to-getting-online.html