14ymedio, Havana, 16 February 2023 – An outage of internet and mobile data was reported in Cuba this Thursday afternoon at 6.45pm, according to reports to 14ymedio from various parts of the country, after a mass gathering at the Grand Packard Hotel in Old Havana, where the American rapper ’Tekashi 6ix9ine’ was staying.
“Only landlines were working, and, in some places Nauta Hogar (Cuban telecoms company), but there was no data or mobile signal”, a phone user from Sancti Spíritus told this newspaper at 7.40pm when the signal returned to his phone.
“We inform our customers that at the present moment there is a problem with mobile services. We are working as fast as we can to identify and fix the problem”, said the Cuban Telecommunication Company (Etecsa) after the service had been down for an hour.
Reports are still coming in from the Cuban capital to the editorial desk of this newspaper confirming that the mobile telephone service is still not operating.
Before the regime cut off the service, there were reports on social media of a mass gathering in front of the Grand Packard Hotel, mostly of young Cubans who had heard about Tekashi’s arrival there.
Several sources reported the moment when dollar bills were thrown from the hotel and this was video’d by a number of people.
Tekashi has gone viral on several occasions for throwing dollar bills to his fans or for giving large sums of money to poor families.
Translated by Ricardo Recluso
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