Residents of the Casino Deportivo area, in the Havana municipality of Cerro, have been without landline telephone service or internet access through Nauta Hogar for almost a month, according to a report by 14ymedio published on Tuesday.
The cause is a fire that damaged the cables of Unión Eléctrica and, along with them, the lines of Etecsa.
The electric company repaired its part of the breakdown weeks ago, but the telecommunications monopoly has been unable to restore the service because, as the neighbors reported to the media, they claim not to have the necessary cables to restore the lines.
Due to the lack of communication, residents must walk several kilometers to make a call or connect to the internet.
Among the locations they visit are the lower levels of the Ministry of Agriculture, located at the corner of Conill Street and Independence Avenue in Nuevo Vedado. The newspaper itself noted that residents from the nearby areas of Primelles and the side of Ayestarán Road, which belongs to the Cerro municipality, also gather there.
The disruption also has a direct economic impact on those who have contracted Nauta Hogar, Etecsa's fiber optic home internet service.
According to what the clients explained to the media, many spend more than 1,000 pesos monthly and have already lost nearly an entire month of connectivity due to a malfunction that is not their responsibility.
The dilemma they face is twofold: if they stop recharging their accounts during the interruption, they fear that Etecsa will cancel their access to the service; if they continue paying, they are funding a service they are not receiving.
However, Cuban legislation offers them protection. The Decree 124 of 2025, which regulates Etecsa's concession, states in its article 13 that the company must not charge its customers for the time they remain without service.
This is not the first time this has happened: in February 2026, Etecsa acknowledged that it needed to reimburse 1,800 pesos to a user who had spent several months without a landline or Nauta Hogar due to a cable fault.
This case is not isolated. The Casino Deportivo area had already experienced a prior documented interruption: at the end of September, the failure of the only operational transformer on a pole left five multi-family buildings in a military community without electricity for over 48 hours, also affecting the Etecsa equipment responsible for the landlines with the prefix 7 637.
The new report documents a different and subsequent impact related to the fire in the cables, the exact date of which has not been confirmed.
The problem reflects a broader structural crisis. In September 2026, Etecsa had accumulated approximately 77,000 reports of interrupted fixed services across the country, attributed to resource shortages, outdated infrastructure, and damage to the external plant exacerbated by blackouts.
In the same building where the 14ymedio newsroom is located, many of the apartments have been without a landline for over a year due to another malfunction that also burned the cables, and Etecsa has not replaced the wiring.
The response received by those affected at the Casino Deportivo is the same as documented by 14ymedio in other similar cases in Havana: "there was no cable" to repair the line.
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