"GGC nodes in Cuba finally went active in the past twenty-four hours," Doug Madory, director of Dyn Research, wrote in an email. "It is a milestone as this is the first time an outside internet company has hosted anything in Cuba."

"The internet in Cuba will still be a painfully slow process. This is just another somewhat rare step forward. For Google services, which will be hosted in country, it will be a milestone."

Google Global Cache or GCC nodes allows users to store content from Google services such as Gmail and YouTube on local servers, in this case those of the state telecommunications monopoly ETECSA.

The agreement between Google's parent company Alphabet and ETECSA was signed in Havana in December. ■