Friday, September 11, 2009

Resolution on Internet service

From the June 29 Gaceta Oficial, the resolution on Internet service:

INFORMATICA Y LAS COMUNICACIONES

RESOLUCION No. 99/2009

El Decreto-Ley No. 204 de fecha 11 de enero de 2000, cambio la denominación del Ministerio de Comunicaciones por la de Ministerio de la Informática y las Comunicaciones, que desarrollará las tareas y funciones que hasta el presente realizaba el Ministerio de Comunicaciones, así como las de Informática y la Electrónica que ejecutaba el Ministerio de la Industria Sidero-Mecánica y la Electrónica.

POR CUANTO: El Consejo de Estado de la República de Cuba, mediante Acuerdo de fecha 30 de agosto de 2006, designó al que resuelve Ministro de la Informática y las Comunicaciones.

POR CUANTO: El Acuerdo No. 2817 de fecha 25 de noviembre de 1994, del Comité Ejecutivo del Consejo de Ministros, faculta a los jefes de los organismos de la Administración Central del Estado; dictar en el límite de sus facultades y competencia, reglamentos, resoluciones y otras disposiciones de obligatorio cumplimiento para el sistema del organismo; y, en su caso, para los demás organismos, los órganos locales del Poder Popular, las entidades estatales, el sector cooperativo, mixto, privado y la población.

POR CUANTO: El Acuerdo No. 3736, de fecha 18 de julio de 2000, adoptado por el Comité Ejecutivo del Consejo de Ministros, establece que el Ministerio de la Informática y las Comunicaciones, es el organismo encargado de ordenar, regular y controlar los servicios informáticos y de telecomunicaciones, nacionales e internacionales y otros servicios afines en los límites del territorio nacional, así como de conjunto con las organizaciones correspondientes, el Acceso a las Redes de Infocomunicaciones con Alcance Global.

Además, está encargado de evaluar, proponer y otorgar la expedición y revocación de concesiones, autorizaciones, permisos y licencias a operadores y proveedores de servicios informáticos y de telecomunicaciones, privados o públicos, velando por su cumplimiento en el marco de su autoridad.

POR CUANTO: La Resolución Ministerial No. 179 de fecha 7 de octubre de 2008, ordena en el país todo lo referente a los Proveedores de Servicios de Acceso a Internet al Público.

POR CUANTO: La Empresa Correos de Cuba, cumpliendo con lo dispuesto en la Resolución Ministerial No. 179/2008 antes mencionada, ha solicitado autorización para la prestación de Servicios de Acceso a Internet al Público.

POR TANTO: En el ejercicio de las facultades que me están conferidas,

R e s u e l v o :

PRIMERO: Autorizar a la Empresa Correos de Cuba, como Proveedor de Servicios de Acceso a Internet al Público, los cuales deberá prestar a personas naturales en el territorio nacional a través de sus áreas de Internet.

SEGUNDO: La Empresa Correos de Cuba, brindará los servicios autorizados, conforme se estipula en la Resolución Ministerial No. 179/2008, que establece las normas para la organización, funcionamiento y obligaciones del Proveedor de Servicios de Acceso a Internet al Público.

TERCERO: La Agencia de Control y Supervisión del Ministerio de la Informática y las Comunicaciones, queda encargada de controlar el cumplimiento de lo que por la presente se dispone.

NOTIFIQUESE al Presidente de la Empresa Correos de Cuba.

COMUNIQUESE a los viceministros, a la Agencia de Control y Supervisión, a las direcciones de Regulaciones y Normas, Economía, Oficina de Seguridad para las Redes Informáticas, a la Empresa de Telecomunicaciones de Cuba S.A., así como a cuantas personas naturales y jurídicas deban conocerla.

ARCHIVESE el original en la Dirección Jurídica del Ministerio de la Informática y las Comunicaciones.

PUBLIQUESE en la Gaceta Oficial de la República de Cuba.

DADA en La Habana, a los días 17 del mes de junio de 2009.

Ramiro Valdés Menéndez

Ministro de la Informática y las Comunicaciones

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

Is Correos de Cuba independent or is it part of the Ministry of Computers and Communications?

Vecino de NF

Anonymous said...

Correos de Cuba is an entity controlled by the Ministry of Computers and Communications as per the Ministry's website. Resolution 179/2008 spells out the requirements and procedures to become an ISP(Internet Service Provider) in Cuba. It is of special interest to note Article 19 items j), and l). Item j) requires ISP to censor material that is considered offensive or against state security or national defense (Can this blog be read in Cuba?). Item l) requires that the ISP register the addresses of all trafic for at least a year.

Vecino de NF

ac said...

Yes, you can read this blog from Cuba and the Miami herald and Yoani's blog too.

None of these are against the Cuban state security not national defense, as a matter of fact, this blog is one of the more balanced you'll find, Yoani's is too petty to worry about and the Herald serves to show the stupidity of the other side of the pond.

I myself verified the access to the three sites the last time I went there, no problem whatsoever.

ac

Anonymous said...

AC,

Could you please elaborate on which ISP you used while in Cuba, and whether there were other sites that were blocked?

Vecino de NF

ac said...

I went to a friend's workplace he used the network medical information (if I remember correctly it was called infomed or something similar). It has pretty poor connectivity (512 kbps DSL for shared between around 100 users), so you can imagine the speed... if not, well... I've navigated faster in a 28 kbps modem, but all in all it worked.

As for blocked sites, I didn't find any (even the CIA factbook opened without a fuss). The main restriction was that only HTTP and HTTPS ports were open, so no P2P whatsoever and FTP only after work time.

I also used an account with full access provided by etecsa (infocom, perhaps?), no restriction whatsoever but I didn't attempt to connect to any phony sites from there. It was also slow (a 56k modem) but thats the fastest you can get there.

ac

Anonymous said...

ac,

Thanks! It is always good to get direct information. Why then are all the news reports saying that regular Cubans can only access an intranet with email capabilities, and very limited browsing capabilities? (That's was the reason why such a big deal was made about the resolution allowing Correos de Cuba to become an ISP.)

Vecino de NF

ac said...

Regular cubans do not have internet service at home, and lots of workplaces don't have internet access or have it severely limited.

For instance, that infomed network provide remote access to the people (doctors) from home BUT it only allows national navigation and some international sites related to health care. It does provide international mail, though.

Nevertheless, common cuban can access freely internet at certain places, like ciber-cafes (expensive) or joven clubs (inexpensive, but time-limited). Also the mail corporation or whatever provided international mail to anyone.

The bulk of the Internet access in Cuba are the university (and other schools) students and people at their workplaces. All university students have some kind of access at their computer labs, and as far as I can tell the only restriction is time and since is a limited resource (the labs have quite small capacities compared with the amount of students) they supposedly only use it for research and similar stuff.

I don't know the reason for all this fuss, at the post offices the same rules will apply (no contra-revolution sites, no pornography, perhaps http(s)-only navigation). The good thing is that common folk have another place to browse the net and access all the information available, and thats always a good thing.

Anonymous said...

AC,

Now you got me confused! Your second to last post indicated that you could access anything on the Internet in Cuba but that the connection was slow. Your last post point to restrictions:" ...at the post offices the same rules will apply (no contra-revolution sites, no pornography, perhaps http(s)-only navigation). " Are the ISP in Cuba blocking sites or not?

Vecino de NF

ac said...

Thats because you didn't read properly what I said. In the places (workplaces and schools) with internet access you are restricted to http(s) ports only, so you only have web access.

If you have internet access at home from a paid isp (like infocom), you don't have that restriction, and in both cases I didn't find any site blocked (ok, I didn't test that many).

Other ISPs, like infomed have one kind of service for health care institutions with access to internet free for all, but only from those institutions. They also provide a limited service from home.

Regarding ISPs blocking sites, I don't know for sure. I tested some sites that I guess would be blocked, but I could access without any problem besides the speed, and nothing happened (no police visit nor service cut whatsoever). In any case thats not necessary, by law they have to keep the navigation logs and to browse contra-revolutionary sites is against the terms of service so it can be easily terminated.

In any case they don't seem to be blocking many sites (that would be easy to do at a central level) or if they do, they don't do a good job at it.

Basically the payed ISPs don't care about what you do with your connection, but I guess that if the police request to analyze the logs for a certain user they will comply and that person will have their service terminated or worse depending on what they find.

For public browsing there are more restrictions, I asked that kind of questions to a network administrator and he told me that they had to implement additional policies and block certain sites just because they weren't related to the purpose of the service.

That guy administered a small dependency of the Havana University and besides the usual speed restrictions, they had a monthly quota of 500mb. The service automatically stopped after that amount, and they had to block lots of sites to avoid people killing the quota. He show me the blacklist they were using and most of the sites were about making friends and porn related. There were no filter in place for political content, but he told me of a spammer sending regularly contra-revolutionary content by mail, so they put that address in the blacklist of the mail server to avoid problems. That was all.

Anonymous said...

AC,

Thanks!

Vecino de NF

ac said...

Just for the record, I tested the following sites:

-The cuban triange blog
-Generation Y blog
-Cuba Verdad
-CNN, CBC, NY Times, The Observer, The Miami Herald and a few others
-Yahoo, Gmail, Hotmail and a few others
-Several chat sites
-The White House site
-The Cuba page of the CIA factbook
-The library of the congress site
-Sun download page (it didn't allowed to download java)
-Microsoft download services (ok)

In general, I tested most of the sites linked in the home page of the Cuban triangle without any problem (besides the speed).

All that using infomed as ISP (infomed is regarded over there as one of the poorest ISP available).

Anonymous said...

ac,

That's good stuff you just posted! Was El Nuevo Herald one of the sites? (People like Ichikawa, Montaner, and Oppenheimer are published there.)

Vecino de NF

ac said...

Yes, no problems whatsoever with the new herald.

Of course, I also tried to test video streaming, but it was sooo pathetically slow that I didn't had the patience to complete the test, so in all honestly I can't tell if works or not.

leftside said...

What AC found is exactly what Reporters Without Borders found when they tested the restrictions in October 2006. Yoani claims she is blocked, but I learned forced martyrism is her stock and trade a long time ago.