It will speed Internet access for Cuban users (regular people, government, visitors, etc.). As local access gets liberalized (which seems inevitable), the international links will be contended -- Cuba isn't rich, and there isn't a huge amount of lit connectivity in place between Cuba and Miami yet.
Seems safe to assume that most Cuban users will be accessing US or EU websites. Caching in Cuba, especially for large media content, will make the same amount of international bandwidth cover more users. (The latency between Havana and Miami isn't much, true.)
At some point, assuming more liberalization, there will be more Cuban websites; if those sites use a cache like CloudFlare it will be faster for international visitors, including expat Cubans.
It's at worst a no-op for Cubans, but probably provides some benefit, increasing over time. If a private company is going to pay for it, I don't see what's wrong with it.
(There's already a Miami POP; I'm not sure what Cuban routing is like but I suspect they have a lot of non-US terminating transit for political reasons, which will probably change with time...)
As to why CloudFlare would want to do it: I'm sure there's a novelty/marketing aspect to it. It's also a feel-good thing for employees and the world -- the Cuban situation has been sad, even if you agree with the embargo policy, and doing something to improve the lives of Cubans is awesome. Plus, Cuba is (hopefully) going to rapidly rejoin the world economy, so it will make increasing commercial sense. But you'd have to ask eastdakota/jgrahamc why they want to do it.
Cloudflare being in Cuba or not will have zero impact on this... unless Cloudflare is getting into the last-mile business (doubtful, but possible).
> As local access gets liberalized (which seems inevitable)
Inevitable, probably, but in 1 year's time - unlikely.
> Caching in Cuba, especially for large media content, will make the same amount of international bandwidth cover more users
This could be the only tangible benefit - except Cloudfare isn't a "nation level" cache, they're a glorified CDN with only some content being "opted-in" to using Cloudflare. So the actual benefit will be minimal (unless Cloudlfare decides to cache all inbound content for the entire nation... which seems unlikely).
> there will be more Cuban websites; if those sites use a cache like CloudFlare it will be faster for international visitors
Cloudflare doesn't need to be in Cuba for this to happen. Frankly, Cloudflare needs to _not_ be in Cuba for this to happen, otherwise it would be no different than a regular hosted server in Cuba (for in-country traffic that is).
> Plus, Cuba is (hopefully) going to rapidly rejoin the world economy,
Cuba never left the world economy -- only the American economy.
Cloudflare isn't an ISP, so Cloudflare putting a PoP in Cuba literally provides zero benefits to Cuba (and it's heavily questionable whether it would provide any benefits to Cloudflare either).
Sure, some money will be exchanged, but it's very likely the data center Cloudflare would colo at would be foreign owned and operated (since Cuba obviously lacks this infrastructure and expertise to build such an infrastructure, let alone maintain one).
> As to why CloudFlare would want to do it: I'm sure there's a novelty/marketing aspect to it
That seems to be the only logical conclusion.
Look, I'm a paying customer and love Cloudflare's service. It made a huge difference for my company's website. But it seems the comment that started this wasn't thoroughly thought through.
Why are you setting such a high bar for "benefit" from CloudFlare?
For web sites that Cloudflare does cache its assets, the latency of downloading those assets will certainly improve. Similarly, being able to establish an https connection on Cuban soil will be a win for customers given they are likely going to be hitting web servers thousands of miles away.
Seems safe to assume that most Cuban users will be accessing US or EU websites. Caching in Cuba, especially for large media content, will make the same amount of international bandwidth cover more users. (The latency between Havana and Miami isn't much, true.)
At some point, assuming more liberalization, there will be more Cuban websites; if those sites use a cache like CloudFlare it will be faster for international visitors, including expat Cubans.
It's at worst a no-op for Cubans, but probably provides some benefit, increasing over time. If a private company is going to pay for it, I don't see what's wrong with it.
(There's already a Miami POP; I'm not sure what Cuban routing is like but I suspect they have a lot of non-US terminating transit for political reasons, which will probably change with time...)
As to why CloudFlare would want to do it: I'm sure there's a novelty/marketing aspect to it. It's also a feel-good thing for employees and the world -- the Cuban situation has been sad, even if you agree with the embargo policy, and doing something to improve the lives of Cubans is awesome. Plus, Cuba is (hopefully) going to rapidly rejoin the world economy, so it will make increasing commercial sense. But you'd have to ask eastdakota/jgrahamc why they want to do it.