The authorities of the Cuban regime have coined the latest euphemism to refer to the widespread crisis in the country. They call it a "complex scenario," and it turns out that it also affects the State's telecommunications monopoly.
The Telecommunications Company of Cuba S.A. (ETECSA) acknowledged that "the situation is complex," but that they "constantly seek solutions" to improve their voice, data, landline telephony, and home internet services.
As pointed out to Juventud Rebelde by ETECSA's Commercial Vice President, Lidia Esther Hidalgo Rodríguez, explaining that "the current financial situation for the company is unfavorable regarding the acquisition of fresh currency."
According to the directive, the state-owned company that monopolizes telecommunications in Cuba faces "growing phenomena of fraud, with websites cloning ETECSA's identity and creating attractive recharge options from abroad, based on the use of national packages."
The end user, explained Hidalgo Rodríguez, receives a message with their top-up sent from a private number that does not correspond to ETECSA, but to illegal intermediaries operating from abroad.
The money involved in those operations does not reach the company. According to the management, deviations for that concept amount to millions of dollars.
But the "complex scenario" has other facets that affect the balances of the company presided over by Tania Velázquez Rodríguez. And the "blockade" could not be missing in the discourse of the company under the control of the Business Administration Group S.A (GAESA), controlled by the military of the Cuban regime.
Ninety percent of the technologies used by ETECSA are imported, explained Hidalgo Rodríguez. In this sense, the effects of the US "blockade" further increase the prices of these technologies, which "the financing required to ensure operations complicates the sustainability of the country's telecommunications system."
"The financial situation does not allow us to expand investments," admitted the Commercial Vice President of ETECSA acknowledging that the country's 3G network is saturated. Likewise, she pointed to the obsolescence of the infrastructure (primarily cables and cabinets on the street) as one of the main causes of the "growing saturation" facing the fixed telephone network.
ETECSA records an average of 16,000 interruptions daily in this service, the vast majority in the capital, some of them taking over seven days to resolve. This is a technology that involves many components, all of which are imported, explained Hidalgo Rodríguez.
Investments in fiber optics are needed to transition to another level in the 1.5 million fixed lines that the country has. At the same time, higher levels of damage are being recorded in the public network due to the burning of garbage under telecommunication cables, a problem associated with the uncontrolled proliferation of garbage dumps in the country.
To all this, we add that the national electricity situation has impacted areas that have been left without electrical backup. At the moment, approximately 450 radio bases are reported to be interrupted daily for this reason, along with a considerable number of landline telephone services. The mentioned source acknowledged that due to the continuous and prolonged blackouts, power generators are kept on for long periods of time, which has led to many of these devices experiencing "issues".
In the short term, the outlook is bleak for ETECSA's customers. The company states that it is focused on improving and optimizing the telecommunications network based on the available resources.
The lack of supplies to replace breakdowns in Nauta Hogar modems, or to install equipment for alternative fixed telephony (known as TFA), are some of the "challenges" facing the company. In addition, Hidalgo Rodríguez pointed out that there is also a shortage in achieving the replacement of SIM cards already in use (not for new ones).
As of today, according to data from the state-owned company, the country has 5,684 cell towers, 1,300 of them with 4G technology, the latter located in high-density areas where they can cover 50 percent of the population.
In addition to this, there are 280,000 households with Nauta Hogar, and 7.8 million mobile lines, 158,000 of which were added in the first four months of this year, and 7.1 million are provisioned for internet. From 2020 to date, that represents a growth of 1.7 million lines.
What ETECSA doesn't mention: The internet blockade to hide the protests and repression.
The metrics show that the communication platforms WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, and some Telegram servers are being blocked by ETECSA, as indicated by the NetBlocks platform following the historic protests on July 11, 2021 (11J).
The findings of this platform dedicated to monitoring the internet globally corroborated users' reports of service interruptions. NetBlocks specified that the company ETECSA is "the only telecommunications company in Cuba, government-owned, and also operates Cubacel's cellular network."
Social networks have become the primary tool for denunciation and testimony of the Cuban civil society, which, following the protests of July 11th, has become one of the main sources of citizen journalism in Cuba.
NetBlocks network data confirms the partial interruption of social networks and messaging platforms in Cuba as of July 12, 2021. Specific restrictions are likely to limit the flow of information from Cuba following widespread protests in which thousands of people demonstrated against the government," NetBlocks said.
It was not the first time that the NetBlocks platform confirmed the widespread internet shutdown in Cuba. In late November 2020, the independent organization denounced the partial interruption of social media in Cuba during the protests related to the 27N and the San Isidro Movement (MSI).
At the end of November 2022, a massive internet outage affected more than 70 percent of the network traffic in Cuba, during the early hours before the start of the municipal elections on the island. Reports from Cuba indicated that the blackout lasted throughout the night.
After spending "the whole night without communication," Cuban activists described the event as "State terrorism," assuming it was a strategy to prevent the planned boycott by the opposition to the elections and to intimidate the country's population.
These interruptions have become a common strategy in response to every expression of dissatisfaction with the regime to prevent the domino effect of new protests.
For example, Internet shutdowns were verified in July 2022, following the demonstrations that occurred in cities such as Holguín, Los Palacios, and Nuevitas. It is also a common practice with activists and opponents, victims of this other form of censorship.
Following the popular protest that took place in mid-March in the city of Santiago de Cuba (17M), users reported internet service outages.
As soon as the first videos of the demonstrations appeared, people inside and outside of Cuba reported having trouble connecting, while others claimed that there were total interruptions by the Cuban state monopoly of telecommunications, ETECSA.
The disruption lasted for days in some areas of the eastern city, where users reported new internet outages, while others managed to connect with difficulty, mainly from their homes, using the Nauta service and some type of VPN.
In other cities of Cuba, such as Sancti Spiritus, Holguin, and Pinar del Rio, problems such as slow access to social networks have also been reported.
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