The American internet giant and the Cuban government agreed to create a seamless, cost-free connection between their two networks once Cuba is able to physically connect to a new undersea fiber-optic cable that would be laid sometime in the future.

With that cable in place, the so-called peering deal linking Google's global internet backbone directly to Cuba's local network would allow Cubans to connect faster to content hosted on Google servers. It would also reduce the Cuban government's cost of connecting users to Google content.

Network owners like the Cuban telecoms monopoly Etecsa currently must pay third-party operator fees for passing traffic along to sites such as YouTube, Google Maps and Google.com.