A look at Havana's SNET, the “street network” of Cuba's capital which at its peak had ~100K IP addresses, and its demise as state-run WiFi and 3G networks arise
As Cuba sluggishly got its population online, the shadow internet developed by volunteers provided a lifeline for thousands of people. Tweets: @crecenteb , @peterguest , @ghoshworld , and @anupkaphle Tweets: Brian Crecente / @crecenteb : An interesting update on Cuba's SNET, which I wrote about years ago for Polygon: The life and death of SNET, Havana's alternative internet https://restofworld.org/... via @restofworld @peterguest : Young Cubans couldn't get on the internet, so they built their own. Fascinating story by @pribellini. https://restofworld.org/... Bobby Ghosh / @ghoshworld : In no time at all, @restofworld has become one of my daily must-reads. Do yourself a favor, follow @AnupKaphle and his band of troublemakers. The life and death of SNET, Havana's alternative internet https://restofworld.org/... Anup Kaphle / @anupkaphle : How young Cubans circumvented embargoes to make their own DIY network Read @pribellini on the life and death of Havana's “street network” https://restofworld.org/...
Context & Ripple Effects
SNET began as a workaround: with Cubans largely offline, volunteers in Havana linked thousands of machines into a 'street network' that grew from the 9,000-computer private network reported in 2015 to roughly 100K IP addresses at its peak. Through the mid-2010s it coexisted with early commercial efforts — foreign companies probing connectivity and censorship as Cubans came online for the first time, and entrepreneurs building businesses despite widespread lack of internet access.
What changed is that the Cuban government itself started supplying connectivity: state-run WiFi and 3G networks gave people legal, island-wide access, and SNET's reason to exist evaporated. The shadow network's death is the closing chapter of a five-year arc from improvised infrastructure to official provision.
First-order effects
- SNET's volunteer operators and its tens of thousands of users lose the local network they built and relied on, as traffic shifts to state-run WiFi and 3G.
Second-order effects
- The local services and communities that formed around SNET — the same ecosystem Forbes documented among entrepreneurs working without widespread internet — must migrate onto state-controlled platforms or fold.
Third-order effects
- The pattern suggests grassroots networks emerge wherever the state under-provisions connectivity but dissolve when official access arrives on the state's terms — leaving governments, not volunteer communities, holding the connection point.
The trend: DIY community networks like Havana's SNET are a transitional layer: they flourish during connectivity scarcity and give way to state-run infrastructure once the state decides to provide it.