USA -Cuba Restore Direct Telephone Communications

 

Cuba and the United States have re-established direct telephone links for the first time in 15 years(cut-off in 1999) Cuba's state telecommunications company announced on Wednesday March 11,2015

The company said it reestablished direct interconnection between the two countries, initially for international calls, as a result of an agreement between the firm and US service provider Domestic Telecom, Inc. (IDT)

The contract between Etecsa and Newark, New Jersey-based IDT was first reported on Feb. 20,2015 The contract marks the first accord signed by companies from both nations since Washington and Havana announced in December  2014 they planned to restore diplomatic ties

The company, Etecsa, said initially the link would only be for phone calls

Telephone calls have until now passed through a third country, making them very expensive

It is the first agreement signed between both countries since the announcement in December 2014 that the two states would renew diplomatic ties

Americans and Cubans will now be able to make direct calls to each other's countries.

Note

For decades before the Cuban Revolution, the two countries were connected by undersea cables for telegraph and telephone services. In 1959, Fidel Castro confiscated the Cuban Telephone Company from International Telephone and Telegraph (ITT), a US-based conglomerate that owned a majority stake in the company

After the US imposed an embargo on its island neighbor in the 1960s, the American government permitted AT&T to use its undersea cable, but did not allow it to add capacity. The cable became unusable in the 1980s, forcing long-distance phone calls between the United States and Cuba to be routed through third parties via satellite uplinks. At that point, AT&T could not pay Cuba for long-distance calls, and deposited the money into escrow accounts.The controversy over the release of these funds became another contentious chapter in US-Cuba relations

With the passage of the Cuban Democracy Act in the 1990s, the FCC authorized US carriers to provide direct-dial service to Cuba via satellite

 At least one American company presented a plan to install and operate a new undersea cable stretching the 90 miles between the two countries

But a 1996 law in Cuba prevented the connection from being laid, and the US never approved the company’s plans for the cable

Direct-dial service was shut down in 2000 after a monetary dispute between the two countries. The Cuban government eventually approved a plan that connected the island to Venezuela and Jamaica, as opposed to choosing a 2009 plan that would have linked it with the US