Yoani Sánchez has written a post on her visit to Siboney, the city where the ALBA-1 undersea cable lands. Siboney was hard hit by Hurricane Sandy, destroying property, causing environmental damage and reducing toursim. Sánchez suggests that improved Internet connectivity would have been relatively cheap and helped with recovery, but that has not happened.
Sánchez visited one of the new Internet access centers in Santiago de Cuba, less than 10 miles from the Siboney landing point. The center was an air-conditioned room with four computers and an attendant, who she suspects is keeping an eye on the users.
She was able to access several blogs, but the classified ad site Revolico was blocked as were Cubaencuentro and Cubanet. She ran a speed test and saw she was getting 1.77 Mbps download and .56 Mbps upload with a ping time of 234 ms.
In spite of these discouraging observations, she concludes on a positive note -- this is a crack in the Internet wall, and it may widen.