No one has misplaced Guantanamo Bay, but the half-century-old U.S. embargo on trade with Cuba has made the Communist-ruled island nation “terra incognita” on the world’s telecommunications map. The White House’s new policy of opening the door to travel and telecommunications links with Cuba could soon sketch in the country.
“I think there’s a tremendous potential opportunity there,” says Tom Soja, Boston-based vice president of Ocean Specialists Inc., an engineer and contractor for subsea cables. Fiber-optic cables snake all around and through the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico. But none link to Cuba because traffic on the cables transverses U.S. territory, and carrying Cuban transmissions would violate the U.S. embargo.