Venezuela started on Saturday the laying of a submarine optical fiber cable will allow Cuba to the Caribbean island to connect to high speed Internet, although access to the network will be massive at least in the short term.

Cuba says the embargo imposed by the United States for half a century you can not use the fiber optic cables passing off its coast, which leads her to access the Internet via a satellite link more expensive and slow.

The Ministry of Communication of Venezuela said in a press release that the new system, which is seen by both countries as a sign of independence from Washington, “break the blockade imposed on communications to the island by the United States.”

For his part, Minister of Science, Technology and Intermediate Industries, Ricardo Menendez, explained that this cable is the first fully organized by the Venezuelan government in conjunction with Cuba and Jamaica, and with the participation of China and France.

A unit of the French company Alcatel-Lucent began to lay the submarine cable of 1,600 kilometers from the shores of Vargas state north of Venezuela, which should come to Cuba in February and will open connection to the neighboring Caribbean Jamaica, Dominican Republic and Haiti.

The Venezuelan cable will give Cuba a data transfer rate of 640 gigabits per second, which would accelerate to 3,000 times the speed of data movement.

However, Cuban authorities have warned that financial and technological problems prevent widespread access to Internet in the short term in Haiti.

The government of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, is the main political and economic ally of the island.