With its blue logo, its air-conditioned offices and no competitor in the national market, the Cuban Telecommunications Company (Etecsa) is experiencing a paradoxical situation: it is one of the few national entities that generates considerable income and, nevertheless, is in a difficult financial situation.
“We are tying pieces of cables to be able to solve the breaks,” laments José Ángel, a worker at the state monopoly, a company that is going through “the worst crisis since its creation,” he tells 14ymedio an employee of the Plaza de la Revolución municipality. “Bosses continue to have privileges, but we are without resources to serve customers.”
José Ángel lists everything they lack. “There are no fixed telephone sets to replace, we lack the boxes to install inside the houses, the supply of cables is also having many problems and even mobility is affected by lack of fuel.” The rosary of hardship stimulates the desertion of employees who once saw Etecsa as a “comfortable and privileged” place to work.
“There are no fixed telephone sets, we are missing the boxes, the supply of cables is also having many problems and even mobility is affected by lack of fuel”
“This has changed a lot in recent years. Before they sold us products at a preferential price, but that is happening less and less,” details a worker at the customer service office located in the Lonja del Comercio. “Here we are a little better because this place is very central and works as an exhibition window, but in the other municipalities they practically cannot even turn on the air conditioning.”
Every fortnight, Etecsa launches a top-up promotion with extra bonuses to be paid from abroad. In 2019, the bachelor of computer science Luilver Garcés Briñas calculated that on each of these occasions the state monopoly could be entering more than 7 million dollars from abroad.
But most of that foreign exchange is not invested in telecommunications infrastructure. “Nearly 90% of what Etecsa collects leaves the company in a large item with an ‘undefined’ concept,” explains another employee linked to the accounting area and who prefers to remain anonymous. “With the rest of what is left, it is very difficult to maintain a quality service because large investments can hardly be made.”
The lack of liquidity is also beginning to take its toll on Etecsa with its foreign investors. “This 2022, for the first time in 15 years, we have not been able to meet our financial commitment to Nokia,” the Finnish company that has worked on the island in part of the implementation of the data service for mobile telephony. “Investors are pressing like crazy, but there is no money,” warns the accountant.
“A point has been reached where a large investment must be made to improve connectivity, because the submarine cable with Venezuela is already overwhelmed”
“It has reached a point where a large investment must be made to improve connectivity, because the submarine cable with Venezuela is already overwhelmed,” adds the source, who assures that alternatives are being sought with the Government of Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador. At the same time, he asserts: “Although negotiations are being held with Mexico for the possible laying of another cable later on, facing a project like this is going to require investments and the company is not currently in a position to carry them out.”
“The problem is that mobile telephony has grown very fast and we have gone from almost zero to approaching the 8 million cell phones that we have right now. Customers are increasingly using data, downloading and uploading videos, wanting to make video calls and watching movies on the internet, all of this is overloading the infrastructure that we have and that is not expanding and improving at the speed that is needed,” he explains.
The bad news can keep piling up for the monopoly. Etecsa has not updated the exchange rate between currencies and the Cuban peso as the state exchange houses did since last August. The delay in accepting the new exchange rate brings many distortions, among them that it is proving more favorable for emigrants to send euros or dollars in cash to their family in Cuba so that they can buy the top-up, instead of paying for the service from the Foreign.
“Each day that passes without Etecsa correcting this big difference, there are more who realize it here and prefer to send the recharge money directly to the relatives”
“A recharge from the United States costs between 20 and 23 dollars and what my relatives in Cuba receive is 500 pesos of fixed balance, plus the bonuses promoted by Etecsa,” explains Indira, an emigrant from the island who has been in Miami for a few months . “That same amount of money in Cuba is equivalent to about 4,200 or 4,500 pesos, enough to put eight 500-peso packages and still have money left over for a smaller package.”
“Every day that passes without Etecsa correcting this big difference, there are more who realize it here and prefer to send the recharge money directly to the relatives,” says the young woman.
At the customer service center, the phone rings and the operator’s voice greets you with the phrase: “Good morning, Marilú, how can I help you?” On the other end of the line, a subscriber denounces in an annoyed tone that he hasn’t had his landline working for three months and that he has reported the break five times. “I’m going to put it on the list but right now we don’t have supplies for repairs,” the employee settles.
Calls with similar claims will continue to happen throughout the day. In his daily report, José Ángel receives calls to attend to breakdowns in his municipality. “I’m going to see what happens, but if cables or boxes are needed, I can’t do anything. I’m just going to comply with the formality that we review the problem,” he says while driving a van with a half-erased Etecsa logo.
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