A publication from ETECSA aimed at promoting the electronic billing for landline services ended up becoming a wall of complaints about the deterioration of a service that many Cubans claim to have been paying for months, and even years, without being able to use.
The state telecommunications monopoly published an invitation on Tuesday on its official page for its customers to receive their bills via email. To subscribe, they had to send their information to the address provided by the company.
But a simple question included in the post, "Do you have a landline service?", opened the door to hundreds of responses filled with frustration, indignation, and irony.
"What phone, what is that?" replied a user.
"Why do we want a receipt if the phones aren't working?" questioned another.
Rather than focusing on the benefits of receiving the bill digitally, numerous customers took the opportunity to complain to ETECSA about faulty lines that, according to their testimonies, continue to generate bills despite being out of service.
The comments reflect a widespread problem across different areas of Cuba. Residents in Havana neighborhoods such as La Víbora, Cerro, Arroyo Naranjo, Luyanó, Boyeros, and San Miguel del Padrón report being without landline telephone service for several months to more than two years. Similar complaints are being voiced from Matanzas, Mayabeque, Ciego de Ávila, Casablanca, and Boca de Camarioca, among other locations.
The described causes are recurring: stolen or burned cables, toppled poles, breakdowns that are never fully repaired, and digitized cabinets that stop functioning every time the power supply is interrupted due to insufficient backup.
"After they digitized the telephone service, most of the time we are cut off, and now on top of that we have power outages," lamented a Cuban woman.
Another user pointed directly to one of the recurring technical issues: "What they need to do is provide backup for the boards; the phones lose service when the power goes out."
They pay every month for phones that don't work
One of the most frequently raised complaints concerns the charging of the monthly fee while the issues remain unresolved.
The testimonies describe a similar pattern: the customer reports the problem to 114, weeks or months pass, and they receive responses such as "there are many outages," "there's no cable," or "there's no budget." However, the bill keeps coming.
"I've had a broken landline for three years; still, I keep paying for it, bill after bill," wrote a woman from Havana.
Another woman claimed that she has been without service since November 2025. According to her account, she paid until December of that year, and subsequently, ETECSA sent a collector to demand payment of a debt of 60 pesos, warning her that they could terminate her contract.
The situation contrasts with the company's own acknowledged data. ETECSA admitted in June that part of its infrastructure cannot operate for more than 24 hours without electricity.
The official newspaper Granma also reported that, by mid-2025, there were more than 25,000 interruptions in the fixed-line telephone service in the country. Around 24% had been unresolved for more than six months, despite regulations stating a 72-hour timeframe for repairs.
Reports of bribery to obtain a solution
Among the comments, there were also accusations from users who claim that bureaucracy and a lack of resources have created a favorable environment for informal payments.
A customer reported that they have been trying to transfer their landline service to their new home since 2022 without success and stated that the solution would require them to pay hundreds of dollars.
"Of course I have a landline. It's just that I can't enjoy its services because you, as a company, are so bureaucratic that you do not allow the transfer from where I have been living since 2022, and now we are in 2026. P.S.: This happens because I don't have 400 dollars for the bribe," he wrote.
This is an accusation made by the user on social media, without any response from ETECSA regarding that allegation noted in the post.
"Mail? Which connection?"
The very nature of the promotion also led to mockery. ETECSA urges users to utilize the internet and email to request the digital invoice, precisely at a time marked by connectivity issues and prolonged blackouts.
"Mail? Which connection?" a netizen joked.
Criticism comes amid the progressive deterioration of the country's telecommunications infrastructure. Prolonged power outages have forced ETECSA to cut services, and a significant portion of the batteries intended to keep the network operational during outages no longer provide the necessary backup.
The situation worsened in the eastern part of the country after Hurricane Melissa passed in October 2025, when extensive areas were left without communications and over 40% of landline services remained disrupted during the recovery process.
At the beginning of August, Cuban comedian Ulises Toirac also publicly questioned the state of telecommunications and called on ETECSA to reinvest the revenue generated from the rate increase applied in May 2025 into infrastructure. As an alternative to the deterioration of the service, he even mentioned the possibility of allowing technologies like Starlink in Cuba.
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