Most Cubans don't have internet access today because $2 for wifi access is a lot of money, and there are still restrictions, and you either buy it illegally or show your id at a government office and face the risk that someone has decided to pay attention to you.
But the success of things like in this article shows that there are a lot of desire for access, which means that once internet connectivity is liberalised and prices tumble, there is likely to be a large demand quite quickly. Yet from a population that is not likely to be able to pay for large upgrades to external links very quickly.
That's an ideal scenario for Cloudflare, in that you'll have demand from Spanish-language businesses outside Cuba to reach a market that once the floodgates opens is likely to grow very rapidly, especially due to the sheer amount of people in the US with connections to the island. If you can broker reduced latency, it will be a big competitive factor for Spanish language businesses that wants to target Cuba but doesn't want to put servers locally.
So don't worry. I doubt Cloudflare is hoping to burn your money to make a political statement (though who knows, it might very well pay for itself in PR), but rather is looking at it in terms of actual business potential.
Also, I don't know what the minimum size of a Cloudflare pop is. Unless they've said something (I haven't looked), for what we know the minimum they need is to be able to rent a 1U slot for a server in a suitably well connected data centre for smaller locations.
I've worked at places where "setting up a POP" meant exactly that, and I've worked at places that insisted on setting up $2 million monstrosities in custom built racks no matter how small the local market was. Unsurprisingly, the latter company went bankrupt.
But the success of things like in this article shows that there are a lot of desire for access, which means that once internet connectivity is liberalised and prices tumble, there is likely to be a large demand quite quickly. Yet from a population that is not likely to be able to pay for large upgrades to external links very quickly.
That's an ideal scenario for Cloudflare, in that you'll have demand from Spanish-language businesses outside Cuba to reach a market that once the floodgates opens is likely to grow very rapidly, especially due to the sheer amount of people in the US with connections to the island. If you can broker reduced latency, it will be a big competitive factor for Spanish language businesses that wants to target Cuba but doesn't want to put servers locally.
So don't worry. I doubt Cloudflare is hoping to burn your money to make a political statement (though who knows, it might very well pay for itself in PR), but rather is looking at it in terms of actual business potential.
Also, I don't know what the minimum size of a Cloudflare pop is. Unless they've said something (I haven't looked), for what we know the minimum they need is to be able to rent a 1U slot for a server in a suitably well connected data centre for smaller locations.
I've worked at places where "setting up a POP" meant exactly that, and I've worked at places that insisted on setting up $2 million monstrosities in custom built racks no matter how small the local market was. Unsurprisingly, the latter company went bankrupt.