With most of the world explored and exploit­ed Cuba may yet be a new unchart­ed fron­tier for media and tech careerists.

Cuba may yet be the great­est oppor­tu­ni­ty for this mil­len­ni­um so far with dig­i­tal expan­sion one of the priorities.

Seems like every­one wants to get “into the act” includ­ing the Rolling Stones offer­ing a free con­cert (pushed back for 5 days due to the President’s visit).

Cuba Broadband Internet Access is Top Priority

In one of Obama’s first speech­es after his arrival he empha­sized the impor­tance of broad­band when he stat­ed that “expand­ing Inter­net access for Cubans is key to chang­ing the country”.

But the rush is on…Google has announced that it will be pro­vid­ing WiFi and Broad­band access in Cuba, West­ern Union is expand­ing oper­a­tions and AirBNB has announced that it will be open­ing up all its Cuba list­ings on April 2^nd.

Accord­ing to the Asso­ci­at­ed Press, Google’s Chief Inter­net Evan­ge­list, Vin Cerf, spent more than an hour talk­ing to an audi­ence of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Min­istry offi­cials and recent com­put­er sci­ence grad­u­ates at the 2016 Inter­na­tion­al Com­put­er Sci­ence Fair, a gov­ern­ment-run sym­po­sium on infor­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy and communications.

If there was ever an oppor­tu­ni­ty to get in on the “ground floor” this is it.  With 42,000 square miles, its loca­tion only 198 miles from Mia­mi (lots of trade oppor­tu­ni­ties) and about 11 mil­lion peo­ple with over 60 years of pent up demand for US goods and ser­vices Cuba would appear to be a gold mine wait­ing to be drilled.

So where is the oppor­tu­ni­ty for job seek­ers?   For starters Google will most like­ly be hir­ing some local employ­ees and Amer­i­cans will­ing to move to Cuba could be on the top of their list.

AirBNB will sure­ly want to sign up as many homes as pos­si­ble and to assure that they are not sign­ing up shod­dy homes some local employ­ees would seem to be in order.

So what oth­er com­pa­nies could have Cuba on their radar?

The first ones that come to mind are the phone com­pa­nies, Ver­i­zon, Sprint, T‑Mobile and a host of small­er MVNOs will most like­ly crop up.  They will all need local employees.

Could Cuba become the Next Start Up Accelerator?

In March of 2014 Cuba’s gov­ern­ment passed a new law of For­eign Invest­ment and is look­ing for $8 bil­lion dol­lars of for­eign invest­ment.   Giv­en Google’s and AirBNB’s ear­ly involve­ment this could inspire oth­er tech com­pa­nies to move in for oppor­tu­ni­ty.  Per­haps Cuba’s gov­ern­ment could extract invest­ments from the new play­ers to fund a new start up community.

Giv­en the push for inter­net access the Cuban gov­ern­ment may yet see the val­ue in offer­ing a busi­ness and tax friend­ly envi­ron­ment for tech startups.

Communist Cuba’s Laws May Need to Be Changed

But they may not be there yet, Cuban hold­ing com­pa­nies must retain con­trol and major­i­ty own­er­ship.    How­ev­er in time the Cuban gov­ern­ment my yet fig­ure out the val­ue of loos­en­ing up their laws to pro­vide a greater incen­tive for for­eign investment.

In What you Should Know about Doing Busi­ness in Cuba, Mike Periu, who has been study­ing Cuba for more then a decade talks about some of the fac­tors one needs to con­sid­er before doing busi­ness;  a harsh busi­ness cli­mate, lim­it­ed con­sumer pur­chas­ing pow­er and lack­lus­ter demand as some of the cautions.

But as we all know those that choose to blaze the trails first must learn how to nav­i­gate through the mud.  To those that start ear­ly there may be a lot of ear­ly pain but as they say at the gym “no pain equals no gain”