Cuban State To Absorb Underground Video-Gamers' Network

After weeks of resistance from Cuban video gamers, the island’s state-run computer organization will absorb the services of an offline underground network that for more than a decade extended privately in Havana.

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The state’s Youth Computer Club will take control of SNET — a merging of the words Street and Network — thanks to a law that came into force in late July and authorizes Cubans to have private networks, while paradoxically dismantling the largest of them.

“This service will grow with the increased infrastructure” of the Youth Computer Club, Pablo Julio Plá Feria, general director of the Communications Ministry, told local media last week. His comments were a response to protests by SNET users.

SNET expanded rapidly over the past decade without the internet, relying instead on wireless connections and cables strung between houses and buildings. The system’s antennas are visible on Havana rooftops.