The Telecommunications Company of Cuba S. A. (ETECSA) launched a new international recharge promotion this week, valid from October 5 to 10, offering 25 GB of data plus unlimited internet access between 12:00 a.m. and 7:00 a.m. for 35 days, along with an additional bonus of unlimited national minutes and SMS for 10 days for those who receive two or more recharges.
The official post on Facebook sparked a wave of criticism from Cubans who point out an impossible-to-ignore contradiction: unlimited data is offered only during the times when power outages prevent charging phones and leave the towers without signal.
"This is outrageous. They offer 'unlimited data' only from 12 a.m. to 7 a.m., but with the power outages in Cuba, how are we supposed to charge our phones at that time? And even if you have battery, the towers lose power and there's no signal," wrote a user in the comments of the post.
Another internet user was more straightforward: "I don't know why the hell they promote it so much if the networks are getting worse every day and all they do is scam people. I lost about 30 GB of internet. What a bunch of abusers."
The outrage is also directed at the cost. An international recharge to Cuba exceeds 25 dollars, which, according to the users themselves, makes the offer “a disrespect to the pockets of Cubans here and their relatives abroad.” One comment summed up the situation with a widely circulated phrase: “What’s the point of unnecessary spending if there’s never any internet connection?”
The structural background exacerbates the perception of deceit. Just days before the launch of this campaign, ETECSA acknowledged that blackouts limit its network and stated that "it is not viable to continue investing in expanding the access network if there is no capacity to support the infrastructure energetically."
The numbers that the company itself has acknowledged are striking. Under normal conditions of electrical crisis, power outages leave 47.5% of the radio bases and 56.5% of the telecommunications cabinets out of service. During the collapse of the National Electro-Energy System on September 18, more than 80% of the radio base sites were without service, and internet traffic fell by 58%.
In Santiago de Cuba, between 140 and 150 towers were out of service daily due to a lack of power. Of the approximately 2,520 radio bases in the country, only half have some form of energy backup, and about 450 are experiencing faults or a lack of fuel in their generators.
Users do not overlook that contradiction. "ETECSA has stated that it will not invest in infrastructure, but it is also not purchasing batteries," noted one of the most shared comments under the promotional post.
The pattern is not new. A Cuban individual publicly questioned ETECSA in March for selling data that is unusable, and in September a similar promotion—featuring the same structure of nighttime data—elicited the same criticisms. The company has responded by pointing out that it invests in solar panels as a partial solution, but users themselves recall that in Santiago de Cuba they reported the theft of solar panels installed by ETECSA, illustrating the extent of the deterioration.
The company launched its October campaign without mentioning any of these figures. The response from its own customers was what completed the picture.
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