Díaz-Canel justifies the increase in internet prices: “I see it as a tactical retreat.”
14ymedio, Yunior García Aguilera, Madrid, 5 June 2025 — The podcast “Desde la presidencia,” [From the Presidency] broadcast this Thursday on the State TV’s Round Table program, confirmed what was already evident: the absolute disconnection of the Cuban regime’s bureaucracy from the debates and real demands of the citizenry. It took Miguel Díaz-Canel a week to address the crisis following the unpopular Etecsa rate increases for phone and internet service. And he did so by repeating the same justifications of the last few days and making it clear that, if there are changes, they will be minimal, because the essentials remain the same. “If we don’t apply them, we would be very close to technological collapse,” he said of the controversial rates.
Faced with widespread criticism that the thirteenfold increase and disguised dollarization of the state-run telecommunications monopoly’s rates had come at the worst possible time, the president’s response was a gem of political cynicism: “There’s never been a better time.” And as if that weren’t enough, he added: “I see it as a tactical retreat. We were moving forward and forward, we have to stop and step back a bit, accumulate what we need, so as not to deny the development we need in the immediate present and in the future.”
To support the new rates, the officials accompanying the president, the Vice Minister of Communications, Ernesto Rodríguez Hernández, and the president of Etecsa, Tania Velázquez, provided a wealth of technical data, including a graph showing revenues—on a downward slope—and data consumption, crossing in the opposite direction. Among the most striking data was the number of radio base stations, of which there are 5,600 on the island, half of which lack power backup.
Among the most striking data was that of the radio bases, of which there are 5,600 on the Island, half of them without power backup.
“Today, depending on its design, a base station connects between 900 and 3,000 people. So, when it goes down, we’re talking about 3,000 users immediately losing connection, losing communication,” Velázquez specified. Purchasing a new one costs $100,000, she said, “and that’s money we don’t have available. Neither to replace nor to expand coverage, for example, in 4G, which only covers 50% of the country and 50% of the population.”
There’s also the shortage of battery banks, she added. About 2,800 are needed to replace damaged ones, but each one costs $1,500. Adding to the total, there are 25,000 landline telephones that have been without service for six months because there is no money to repair them, and new cell phones can’t be sold because of a shortage of SIM cards.
With this litany of shortcomings, what is inexplicable, not to say negligent, is the failure to plan investments in time to reverse the situation. But Díaz-Canel, as if the problem had just arrived, said that the rate increase is something that “we are obliged to take if we want—and it is what we want—to save, first and foremost, a basic service for the population, and one essential for advancing the country’s digital transformation.”
Knowing, however, that the population is up in arms against this colossal blow—which is occurring at the same time they are seeing more and more hotels being built that are never filled—he offered, in his own way, a meager apology. “It is necessary to recognize where we have failed in communicating or designing them,” he admitted regarding the new measures. And in a seemingly conciliatory manner, he said: “The leadership of the Revolution will never shy away from dialogue with the people, because our reason for being is precisely to serve the people.”
“The leadership of the Revolution will never shy away from dialogue with the people, because our reason for being is precisely to serve the people.”
In recent days, the internal fracture these measures have caused within the state apparatus itself has been laid bare. This isn’t just about ETECSA. The decisions were pushed by the head of government, Manuel Marrero Cruz, and blessed since late 2024 by the leadership of the Cuban Communist Party (PCC). But, faced with popular fury, both Díaz-Canel and Marrero preferred to throw the company’s executives into the crossfire, using them as a shield.
And yet, the rift opened. Last Saturday, from his Facebook wall, the very official Ernesto Limia Díaz—vice president of the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba (UNEAC) and a trusted essayist of the regime—publicly attacked the prime minister. He began his message by aligning himself with Díaz-Canel, whom he called “our president” and showering him with praise for his actions during previous crises. But then he mentioned Marrero—without titles or affection—and demanded that he show his face. In an unexpected outburst, he wrote that it was he who should “undo wrongs,” blaming him directly for the rate increase.
His courage didn’t last long. After Roberto Morales Ojeda—known as the “guillotine of cadres” within the PCC—posted a call to “close ranks,” Limia reversed course. In his new post , with a melancholic tone and barricade-like vocabulary, he spoke of “shooting ourselves in the foot,” blamed “Marco Rubio and the Batista clique,” and asked, with selective memory: “Strikes for what?” The story, apparently, weighs more than 6 GB.
The Cuban student rebellion, however, has already crossed the Atlantic. Even the podcast La Base—a sanctuary of former Spanish leader Pablo Iglesias—devoted a special episode to the topic. The only interviewee from the island, paradoxically, was not a student, but Ernesto Teuma, a member of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC). His testimony was equally damning: he acknowledged that the current bureaucracy, “in the absence of Fidel, has failed to build itself with a new generation of leaders.” The comrade’s statement left the presenters speechless, after almost an hour of prelude heavy on nostalgic sentimentality and external justifications.
In the podcast broadcast by Cuban Television, the president of Etecsa acknowledged that limiting consumption to 6 GB was a deliberate strategy to push customers to seek international top-ups. It is precisely this diaspora, denied the right to express their opinions and accused of spreading “scurrilous ideas,” that the state monopoly intends to exploit even further to keep its finances afloat.
For his part, Díaz-Canel categorically denied any conflict with the students. He said the photos, videos, and testimonies circulating on social media about the academic strike—without ever mentioning the word “strike”—are manipulations by “counterrevolutionary hate platforms.” But university channels themselves have published minutes, communications, and interventions that contradict the president. The strike is a fact, as is the call for the resignation of the leaders of the University Student Federation, accused of not representing anyone who doesn’t wear an official guayabera.
In the Telegram group La Manigua, the cradle of the most radical and violent sectors of the ruling party, user Yuri Aguiar Luna published a warning this Thursday that seems to reflect the preference of some sectors of the regime for repression rather than dialogue: “I’m reminding some of the kids at MatCom (Faculty of Mathematics and Computing) that yesterday, June 4, was the anniversary of Tiananmen.”
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