“The worst thing is the internet connection, although the calls are also of poor quality and hard to hear”
14ymedio, Julio César Contreras, Matanzas, June 2, 2025 — A single line at the top of her phone tells Mariana that she has very little coverage. Although she is outside and in a central location, the call has been cut off twice, and the voice on the other side of the line seems to come from inside a cave. Despite the new price increases announced by the state monopoly Etecsa, telecommunications are going from bad to worse in the city of Matanzas.
“They can’t provide an efficient service,” the woman, who lives in Reparto Iglesias, told 14ymedio. “The worst thing is the internet connection, although the calls are also of poor quality and hard to hear. They are cut off or simply can’t communicate with another number,” she says, listing the problems that Cubans must overcome every day to contact family and friends.
With blackouts lasting up to 20 hours a day, making calls has become an ordeal due to the lack of power backup from most telecommunications towers installed in the city. ” I change the frequency of my phone to 2G, I go up to the roof of the house, but the most I can do is send an SMS and, if I’m lucky, make a short call,” adds Mariana. Like many of Etecsa’s customers, the woman wonders whether the money raised from the new data packet prices will eventually be used for investments in the monopoly infrastructure.
“I change the frequency of my phone to 2G, I go up to the roof of the house, but the most I can do is send an SMS and, if I’m lucky, make a short call”
Román Paz Cabrera, head of the commercial department of the territorial division of Etecsa in Matanzas, was categorical in statements to the newspaper Girón about the bad moment that the company is going through. “The equipment we use is high-tech, fully imported and rapidly obsolete. Communications are affected in the country, many of them related to the electro-energy situation, because radio base stations are shut down because they do not have the necessary backup, and this affects mobile telephones.”
“I didn’t even know about the price increase, I realized when I tried to check my balance and a message arrived saying that the service was not available,” laments one young man who is among the 560,000 customers who have mobile service in the province. “I am very concerned because I need internet for almost everything, to consult the books that I’m sent to review at university, for video games and to watch movies or series.”
The young man believes that Cubans under 25 are one of the groups most affected by the measure announced last Friday by Etecsa. “Most of my friends still depend on their parents to pay for data packages, because they are studying and do not earn money.” With rising prices, “many families will no longer be able to afford to give their children access to literature or entertainment.”
Despite not being digital natives and the challenges that the use of new technologies implies, the price increase has fallen on the elderly like a jug of cold water. With an aging population due to low birth rates and the exodus of younger people, older people often rely on web connectivity to maintain a link with their children and grandchildren who have emigrated. With a monthly pension of 2,500 pesos, Ernesto, 78 years old and living in the neighborhood of Versalles, has been doing his homework since last Friday. “From now on I will only send text messages by WhatsApp,” he explains to this newspaper. If he maintains the video conferences that bring him several times a week to his daughter’s home in Hialeah, the costs would be too high, and he would not be able to afford that link that gives him “the strength to get out of bed every day.”
If he wants to have video conferences that bring him several times a week to his daughter’s home in Hialeah, the costs would be too high
For local entrepreneurs, the new costs are a real challenge. In Liberty park, Luis managed this Sunday to distribute a list on WhatsApp with offers from appliances to baby clothes. The informal trade network is increasingly using instant messaging tools to offer its products and services. “There are customers who ask me to send more photos of the goods or make a video to see how something works, but with these internet prices I find it difficult.”
In a nearby coffee shop, the employee stretches up her arm to try to improve the signal that reaches her mobile phone. The gesture has some despair because on the counter, a chocolate and vanilla cake is waiting to be moved to a birthday party, but the message with the delivery address has not arrived on the phone. “It’s bad for a business that depends on Etecsa,” concludes the woman who, after several attempts, manages to obtain the information. By the time the messenger is ready to go, the cake is already suffering from the ravages of heat and delay.
*Translator’s note re “Tarifazo.” The “azo” ending in Cuban Spanish is a ’magnifier’, so here, roughly: “the gigantic price increase thing”
Translated by Regina Anavy
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