According to a report by Network World, Google servers are now live in Cuba.
It is expected that the country’s Internet speed will increase at least for users of Google’s services in the island nation.
The servers are part of Google’s global network of caching servers, which store data locally.
Last year, Google and Cuba agree to cooperate to improve Internet performance on the island.
Eric Schmidt, chairman of Google’s parent company, Alphabet Inc., signed the deal with Mayra Arevich Marin, president of state telecommunications monopoly ETECSA. It grants local Cubans speedy access to the Google Global Cache network, which stores content from sites such as Gmail and YouTube on servers located closer to end users.
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Cuba has one of the lowest internet access rates in the world.
Last year, just one-third of Cubans went online, according to official statistics.
In a country where public internet access is slow and expensive, it was not clear how the deal would affect service in the short term. According to Jose Ramon Paz owner of Quik, a Miami-based telecom and Internet access provider, says, “it will definitely improve the performance of Google’s products in Cuba and may possible have a secondary benefit for all of Cuba’s Internet users.”
Cuba is connected to the rest of the internet almost exclusively via the ALBA-1 submarine cable, which runs from the island to Venezuela, said Doug Madory, director of internet analysis at Dyn Research. Dyn was first to spot the emergence of the Google caching servers on the internet.
