Google helps offer vastly faster Internet in Cuba

In an exclusive tour of the site with The Associated Press on Monday, Google's head of Cuba operations, Brett Perlmutter, said the company was optimistic that the Google+Kcho.Mor studio would be part of a broader cooperative effort to bring Internet access to the Cuban people.

The project has limited reach but enormous symbolic importance in a country that has long maintained strict control of Internet access, which some Cuban officials sees as a potential national security threat.

The connection at the Kcho studio is provided by Cuba's state-run telecommunications company over a new fiber-optic connection and President Obama's comments indicate that the new Google-Cuba relationship was negotiated at the highest levels of the U.S. and Cuban governments.