US Sets a Goal in Cuba: Open Internet

Cuba’s regime, which has curbed the Internet to help prevent any popular uprising, faces a new challenge to its policy: US diplomacy.

Roberta Jacobson, the US State Department’s top diplomat for the hemisphere, will lay the path to a potential new era in connectivity for the region’s least-wired nation. Promoting Internet access for Cubans is a top priority for Washington, where the Obama Administration began to permit commercial shipments of devices like mobile phones and laptops, as well as related software and hardware. A senior US official said that American negotiators didn’t expect any breakthroughs in the first round of talks, which are set to focus on the details of establishing formal embassies in both countries. But the rapprochement is raising hopes of a freer Internet on the Caribbean island.