Four days after causing panic in at least nine provinces with a completely false earthquake alert, ETECSA acknowledged its responsibility for the incident on Friday, attributing it to a "technical-human error" made by its own specialists.
The late explanation and unusual terminology sparked a wave of mockery and criticism in the official ETECSA statement on Facebook.
"You all keep surpassing yourselves every day. Now you've really outdone yourselves," said a user in the comments thread, with a phrase that encapsulates the exhaustion of many Cubans in the face of the repeated failures of the state telecommunications monopoly.
The four-day delay in providing an explanation was one of the main targets of public outrage.
"Bravo, it only took them four days to admit that someone messed up. Brilliant," wrote a user in ETECSA's Facebook post.
The term "technical-human error" did not go unnoticed either. "I had never heard that in my years of study. I spent six years studying for pleasure; from what I can see, in a field where we work with too many logarithms, it's now called technical-human error," joked another commentator with a technical background.
Reactions ranged from sarcasm to disbelief. "Now they've really gone too far: technician-human, I'm going to the dictionary to see what this means," wrote a user.
Another internet user found practical use in the new expression: "I will use it for when I get home and my wife asks me why I'm late; I'll just say...".
Technical questions also arose without answers. A user reported that the alert appeared as a pop-up on an Android device with no SIM card, and no WiFi or Bluetooth active: "How could they receive that alert? Why wasn't it received on any iPhone?" they asked.
Others Cubans questioned ETECSA over the false seismic alarm from the very first moments, and the comedian Ulises Toirac also criticized ETECSA following the incident.
ETECSA, in its statement, points out that "the messages were issued due to a technical-human error, generated by our specialists who were conducting tests on the telecommunications network."
The company also reported that it has taken measures against those responsible and is working to prevent the incident from happening again.
The false earthquake alert caused panic in Cuba on August 18, when thousands of mobile phone users received a notification of an earthquake that had not been officially issued by anyone.
The National Center for Seismological Research (CENAIS) immediately refuted the notice. Its director, Enrique Diego Arango Arias, was unequivocal: the alert "is not based on any officially issued warning," and the network of seismological stations did not record any activity to support it.
The Civil Defense and the United States Geological Survey (USGS) also ruled out any real earthquake in the island.
In the early days, there was speculation that the Android earthquake alert system could have been behind the notification, but Google confirmed that the earthquake alert was not theirs: the technology platform did not detect or send any earthquake warning in Cuba that day.
This episode adds to a series of accumulated failures by the state telecommunications company so far this year: a breakdown that caused a nationwide interruption of cellular service on August 3, a fiber optic cut that affected the Nauta payment system on August 17, and multiple disruptions of the mobile network due to power outages in July and August.
Related videos:
Filed under: