Cubans created island intranets, despite government bans

The economic condition of Cuba, to put it mildly, leaves much to be desired. Besides the fact that the inhabitants of the island (at least the majority) live very poorly, almost every action of a citizen of the “Island of Freedom” is controlled by the state. In any case, until recently cell phones were banned in Cuba, the Internet was also banned, as well as any radio equipment (including Wi-Fi), except for conventional radio receivers and TV.

All communication lines in Cuba are under the supervision and control of the government, and access to the Network is possible only in some hotels and Internet cafes. Nevertheless, the locals, despite the ban, built their own network infrastructure . The local "home LAN" includes more than 9 thousand computers.

Using CAT5, Cubans connected home to home to this network. Who could, used and wireless equipment, with the antenna had to be masked. It is clear that in the network to which more than 9 thousand computers are connected, there was something to do — here are game servers, online communities, and other things that are familiar to us. By the way, Cuba has its own top-level domain - .cu, but access to it is also controlled by the state, and the price is far from the capabilities of an ordinary person.
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Not so long ago, with the relaxation of the political and economic regime, the government learned about the local network of Cubans. There was even an investigation, in order to find out whether the "connected" are engaged in something illegal. The local network was saved by the fact that there was no connection to the Global Network, so SNet (as the Cubans call their local network) remained untouched.

Now the United States and Cuba are looking for ways to build political and economic ties, so most likely Cubans will soon have access to the Internet. Note that the population of Cuba is not so large - 11 million people live on the island. In the meantime, everything here is bad, even with ordinary cellular networks: 2G networks cover far from the whole island, but only large settlements.