Residents walk several kilometers to communicate and others keep paying 1,000 pesos for ‘Nauta Hogar’ Internet for fear of losing the service
14ymedio, Havana, October 21, 2026 / The entire area around Casino Deportivo, in the Havana neighborhood of El Cerro, has been without telephone service or internet connection for almost a month due to a fire in the cables of the Electric Union (UNE), which also damaged the lines of Etecsa [Cuba’s state telecommunications company]. The electric company repaired its fault weeks ago, but the telecommunications monopoly says it does not have the cables to restore communications, residents told 14ymedio.
The lack of service affects both those in that part of the municipality of Cerro who use landlines and the homes that depend on Nauta Hogar, Etecsa’s home internet service, which needs the damaged infrastructure to work. Faced with this unresolved situation, residents must travel several kilometers to make a call or connect to the internet.
Among the places they go is the ground floor of the Ministry of Agriculture – located on Conill Street, at the corner of Independencia Avenue, in Nuevo Vedado – where, as this newspaper was able to confirm, residents also come from around Primelles and from the side of Calzada de Ayestarán that belongs to the municipality of Cerro.
On top of being cut off, there is a financial problem for families who have contracted Nauta Hogar, the web browsing service offered over fiber-optic cables. According to customers who spoke to this newspaper, many pay more than 1,000 pesos a month and have already lost practically an entire period of connection because of a fault that was not their responsibility.
Many pay more than 1,000 pesos a month for the Nauta Hogar service and have already lost practically an entire period of connection
Now, customers of the cable connection service face the dilemma of paying out the money again without knowing when they will be able to use the service, since they fear that if they stop topping up their accounts while the outage lasts, they will end up losing access to Nauta Hogar. Some are considering continuing to pay while waiting for Etecsa to replace the line damaged by the flames.
Residents, however, can file a claim under Cuban law. Decree 124 of 2025, which regulates Etecsa’s concession, establishes in its Article 13 that the company must not charge its customers for the time they remain without service. It would not be the first time the company has had to compensate an affected customer: in February 2026 it acknowledged that it owed a credit of 1,800 pesos to a user who had spent several months without a landline or Nauta Hogar because of a cable fault.
Decree 124 of 2025 establishes in its Article 13 that Etecsa must not charge its customers for the time they remain without service
In the building where the 14ymedio newsroom is located, many of the apartments have been without a landline for more than a year because of another fault that also burned the cables. Since then, Etecsa has not been able to replace the line.
In the rest of Havana, blackouts not only leave residents in the dark and cut off: they also pit them against one another over the few hours of electricity they receive, even provoking a “war” between the circuits that receive unequal treatment from the UNE.
In Luyanó, residents of the less favored areas protested because the circuits that supply two hospitals, the Miguel Enríquez Clinical Surgical Hospital and the Diez de Octubre Gynecological-Obstetric Hospital, hardly suffered any outages. After months of complaints, petition drives and representations to the authorities, they managed to have the blackouts shared out between the two sides week by week.
The measure had an additional consequence. A resident of the favored circuit explained that when the power is cut to the buildings in the other sector, they are also left without internet, because the Etecsa antenna is installed there. Having power is not enough to be connected. Very often the exact opposite happens.
Last weekend, the discontent also reached Nuevo Vedado, where circuit PZ15 racked up 37 hours and 19 minutes without electricity. Residents staged cacerolazos [pot-banging protests] and shouted from the buildings to demand that the supply be restored. The protest was especially striking in an area where numerous officials and people linked to the ruling party live.
Translated by GH
______________________
COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORK: The 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.