Date: Mon, 20 Mar 94 02:34:00 EST
From: Donald E. Kimberlin <0004133373@mcimail.com>
Subject: History May Repeat Itself
In article <Digest v.14, iss.122>, rmcguire@wiltel20.wiltel.com (Russ
McGuire) posted an announcement about Wiltel achieving an agreement
with EmTelCuba to build the first recent-generation broadband link
between Cuba and the U.S. by laying a new fiber optic cable between
Florida and Cuba.
I have a close interest in works of this sort due to my own personal
career work in such spheres, so I had some private communication with
Russ about this matter. Wiltel seems to be playing down the matter,
in essence saying it’s no biggie because the distance is short and
there’s no earth-shattering technology to announce. I don’t see it
that way. In fact, the Wiltel execs have achieved something even AT&T
for all its prestige and established ability couldn’t do. We have
here a case where David didn’t slay Goliath, but did finesse a route
that Goliath couldn’t follow. And, in the longer run, we may see some
very old telcom history repeat itself.
That may in part have to do with a burden AT&T had to bear with the
Cuban government. It’s a telecomm lesson in dealing with what are
called “emerging nations.” The Cuban-American Telephone
Company of
the pre-Castro era was a 50/50 AT&T-ITT venture that got expropriated
very early on. Due to that very nature, Cuba’s connectivity to the
outside world was largely hegemonized by the Yanquis at AT&T until
very recently. Up until 1951, in the era when the means of providing
connectivity around the globe was HF radio, Cuba had only a few
channels via AT&T into the U.S. (via AT&T’s Fort Lauderdale Overseas
Radio Station, and a few odd HF links to Spain and several of the
Caribbean nations, and that was about it. In a breakthrough
technology for 1951, AT&T laid its Type SA Submarine Cable System
between Key West and Havana (78 miles) and provided at one swoop a
dozen stable, reliable analog voice channels. (Those who know about
the more recent technology of submarine cables will recall that the
1957 TAT-1 across the Atlantic was the Type SB Submarine Cable System,
and may have puzzled what Type SA ever was.)
The U.S. was enjoying growing business with Cuba through the 1950’s,
and telephone traffic was such that overflows had to spill off the
cable onto the HF radio, which was at that point intended to be a
“back-up.” With the advent of Operator Toll Dialing and the intimate
relation between Cuban-American and AT&T, the dial networks of the two
countries were completely open to each other, in terms of what
operators could accomplish. People were becoming more and more
telephone-dependent, and the offered traffic between Cuba and the
world skyrocketed. To handle this, AT&T and Cuban-American opened up
one of the few SHF troposcatter links AT&T ever used, a 900 mHz link
between Florida City (just south of Miami) and Guanabo (near Havana)
in the mid 1950’s. That link could provide 600 (and more, with
expansion) telephone channels, or one analog video link. (In fact,
the entire tropo system, like all such links, ran both frequency and
space diversity. This meant the redundant link could be used for
video at most times, not interrupting telephone use when video was
ordered.) It was a heady time for the television networks when their
(then) landline video networks reached Miami, and it was possible to
“do a remote from Havana,” and there were a few. Having the new tropo
with the old SA cable for a “backup” also permitted shutting down the
HF radio operation from Fort Lauderdale. It should have been some
very good business, indeed.
That’s the way it was when revolution came to Cuba: More than 600
channels of telephone circuits out to the U.S., with dialing
capability and open access between the networks, plus the few bits of
HF to other nations that had been in place for a number of years.
And, that’s the way it stayed for almost 30 years afterwards, with the
tropo to Florida City being the prime connectivity pipe for Cuba to
the outside world, controlled by an entity the Cubans had no reason to
admire; seen as both economically ex-colonial and politically unacceptable.
Yet, it was the only significant tool available.
Another incident made the hurt deeper. The rift in relations between
the countries, while not disrupting the technology, did cause problems
in matters of money. Since AT&T and Cuban-American were partners in
operating the links, each had a literal “open account” with the other,
with settlements of revenue shares that could no longer be made.
Meantime, calls originating from Cuba were given unlimited access to
the U.S. network with automatic dialing. As the reach of that U.S.
network expanded, fingers in Havana could reach wherever in the world
a U.S. operator could reach, and matters of paying for it weren’t
considered. For about ten years, there were no settlements, and no
meaningful communication between AT&T and the new regime in Cuba.
However, the balan
ce due AT&T was getting larger and larger.
I was working in the AT&T offices in Miami the day word came down that
we were to cut off the trunks from Cuba. Nothing like that had ever
been done before. (In the world of international telecommunications,
attempts are even made to keep some channels open during war, just in
case the politicians should decide to try to talk out their
differences. This doesn’t mean that circuits are never shut down; it
doesn’t mean the technicians engage in friendly chat on them, but more
often, some are kept up without publicity, at least so long as the
physical plant holds up. The general public may not have access to
them, but the governments do.) So, it was high drama in the Miami
Testroom on that day. It only took about three hours for the telegrams
to arrive from Cuba, asking what was wrong.
Western Union was still operating with Cuba on its old submarine
telegraph cable, the second oldest in the world. That cable has a
special history of its own, more of which fits later in this story.
AT&T had, of course, covered all its political bases and had the plan
laid about how to handle this largest of “unpaid phone bills.” The
response was to tell the Cubans no more free access could be had; that
if they wanted service reconnected, it would have to be on the basis
of all future calls being paid on the U.S. end. That is, all calls
sent-paid into Cuba, and all collect outbound, so AT&T could get its
share of the revenue from somewhere. They’d have to agree to that, and
leave it that way indefinitely. It didn’t take long for the Cubans to
agree, of course, so by later in the afternoon, the circuits were back
up, with operators at Miami enforcing all outbound calls from Cuba as
collect on the U.S. end. That situation remained for many years. It
was, of course, just another hurtful Yanqui action as seen by the
Cubans.
As the satellite era grew upon the world, the Cubans saw an
opportunity to bypass the Yanquis, if they could only get the needed
funding and connectivity. During the years of closeness with the
USSR, some Molnya earth stations had been installed, but these were
largely limited to communications with Russia, and not useful for much
connectivity into other parts of the world. Finally, by the 1980’s,
alternatives seemed feasible. The Cubans invited the world to bid
providing them with new links to the global community. AT&T had
reason to want to replace the now-aged analog tropo system. It was
occupying 900 mHz spectrum Southern Bell should by then have for use
of the growing cellular mobile telephone business. AT&T proposed a
fiber optic cable between Florida and Cuba, but lost out to a bid from
Italcable, Italy’s highly entreprenurial international carrier. The
Cubans accepted a deal with Italcable hauling their telephone trunks
out by satellite to Italy and from there to the world. The U.S. and
AT&T were stuck with the old tropo, and the SA cable, when it was
functional. The SA cable would often be out of service for several
years at a time, because whenever it got damaged (fairly often by a
ship in the shallow waters of the Florida Strait), a whole, protracted
negotiation via third parties would ensue about what nation’s
cableship would be permitted in Cuban waters and who would pay the
bill.
And that situation prevailed until Hurricane Andrew ended the life of
the Florida City tropo antennas. (Most Americans saw the wreckage on
TV as part of the Hurricane Andrew stories.) Now things were changed.
While the U.S. had lost most of its connectivity to Cuba, the Cubans
did not lose the world. It was being handled through Italy. (By that
point in time, the Cubans claimed that some $80 million was due them
in unsettled accounts that were frozen in the U
.S., as well.) AT&T
was indeed strapped by the way things had gone for three decades.
Enter Wiltel on the scene. It turns out that John Williams, the
leading founder of Wiltel’s parent company, was born in Cuba in 1918,
and that his family had business interests there until the revolution.
Finally, there was someone in the U.S. who was “sympatico” to talk
with — someone who could reason the Latin way. Where AT&T’s hegemony
couldn’t work, Williams’ personal diplomacy could. It wasn’t too
difficult for Wiltel to offer an arrangement that restored a link the
Cubans wanted, but do it in a way they could tolerate.
The net result will be CUBUS-1, not a great technogical feat, but
indeed, a great international relations feat.
CUBUS-1 will be, in a way, a repeat of another submarine cable between
Florida and Cuba 135 years earlier; one most of the world knows
nothing about. That cable was the second long international one in
1858, just months after the landmark (but short-lived) cable laid
across the Atlantic by the Anglo-American Cable Company with Cyrus
Field as its American figurehead. Within months of the laying of the
1858 transatlantic cable, entreprenurial Englishmen had another one
operating from Punta Rassa, Florida to Havana.
The immediate question is: Why? Who wanted to connect the then
mosquito-infested southwestern part of Florida to another country?
There was hardly any population there, yet here were people, literally
living and working in a tent town, setting up a telegraph line to
another country.
It turns out that (as in a later Alascom case not well publicized
across the Bering Straits during the Cold War era), the engine of
trade was operating. Cattle ranchers in Florida were shipping stock
on the hoof from the outpost of Fort Myers to Havana, lightering them
down the Peace River and its tributaries to Charlotte Harbor for
embarkation to Cuba. A telegraph cable along the route made good
business sense.
And, connectivity back north along the Peace River, to gain entrance
to the growing U.S. telegraph network made sense, too. Cuba and the
U.S. had electrical communication many years before other capitals
around the world did. In fact, it made so much sense that within a
very short time, the cable route from Punta Rassa was extended beyond
Havana to Kingston, Jamaica, providing connectivity there, as well.
(Using the limited technology of 135 years ago, a long piece of the
submarine cable was merely laid out on top of the ground crossing
Cuba. That method was later used worldwide for a number of early
submarine telegraph cables, crossing large stretches of dry land by
just laying the cable on the ground.)
As Western Union grew into international telegraphy, it purchased the
Punta Rassa-Havana cable, bringing it ashore on Key West to provide a
terminal for that small fishing village, too. When Key West grew
large enough, the portion from Punta Rassa was abandoned, since Fort
Myers and Key West were developing their own communication routes to
Miami and Tampa as those cities grew. So, the Western Union maps
showed a Havana telegraph cable that terminated at Key West and Punta
Rassa was forgotten. Today, there’s a small bronze marker in Key West
that says it was the terminal for the “first telegraph cable to Cuba.”
It’s one of those partial truths of corporate history books, and
forgets the much earlier history of the _real_ “first cable to Cuba.”
What does CUBUS-1 portend beyond Havana? Might it be extended to
Kingston? Might it even provide a jumping-off place for Cuba to
become a telecommunications hub for the Caribbean? It’s much too
early to know now, but history does have a way of repeating itself,
doesn’t it?
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