ETECSA acknowledged this Saturday that the efforts to restore telecommunications on the Isla de la Juventud are ongoing without definitive progress, and for the fourth consecutive day, the company did not provide any estimated date for the restoration of service.
In a statement published on Facebook, the state telecommunications company announced that while its technicians have managed to locate the point of interruption in the submarine cable, the weather conditions have hindered the repair work.
"The weather conditions have complicated the repair efforts of the damaged cable section, which involves bringing it to the surface of the sea and executing the fiber splicing with great precision," stated ETECSA.
The outage began on Monday, September 8, when damage to the two main connection routes of the special municipality with the national network left the entire island without mobile services. Landline telephone services were also partially affected, limited only to local calls.
As a temporary measure, the company maintains an emergency satellite link which they admitted, "although its use is limited, has made it possible to ensure the continuity of the transmission of national radio and television signals on the Island." That is, in practice, the only connection that links the territory with the rest of the country.
ETECSA concluded its statement with an open-ended promise: "We will continue to take the necessary actions to reconnect this territory to the network."
The lack of communication has unleashed a humanitarian crisis among Cuban families abroad who have gone days without news of their loved ones on the island.
Geida Ponciano posted a video in which she tearfully recounted, "Those who have their mother alive, try to understand me."
Frank García Martínez was more straightforward: "Four days of silence mean four days of anguish for thousands of people. We are not asking for privileges. We are asking for something basic: the ability to communicate with our family."
The breakdown does not happen in a vacuum. The Isle of Youth is experiencing a power crisis that has progressively deteriorated the ETECSA network throughout 2026: blackouts increased from four hours daily in February to 18 hours in May, and to just one or two hours of electricity per day in July.
On August 18, the territory was practically left without electricity, with power reserved only for the hospital and water pumping.
The company has acknowledged that its network cannot remain operational for more than 24 hours without electricity supply, with nearly 47.5% of mobile base stations out of service during prolonged outages.
This interruption is the most serious episode in a series of failures that accumulated throughout the summer: on August 3, a generator failure caused a nationwide interruption of mobile phone service; on August 17, a fiber optic cut affected the Nauta payment system; and on September 2, issues with SMS left Transfermóvil out of service.
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