Havana/The Nauta Hogar Domestic Internet service is about to meet a decade and the technology that makes its operation possible – Módems, Routers, cables and other devices – no longer gives. Given the inefficiency of the monopoly of the Etecsa communications, which does not provide spare parts or assistance, Cubans must resort to the black market, where the prices of these implements varies according to the whim of the seller.
“When they opened the service in 2016 they made a list and I noted,” says this newspaper Pedro, a spirit whose history with Etecsa – like that of most Cubans – is an enumeration of dislikes and disagreements. “At two months I signed the contract and brought me the teams.”
Electronics fan, Pedro was satisfied to have what – at least then – was the last shout of digital fashion: having the Internet in the house was only possible dream, for his family, in the distant and dollarized capitalism. For Cuba, he recalls, it was already quite impressive to have the squalid mobile connection.
When the first strong downpour of that year fell, thunder included, Pedro discovered the Achilles heel of the new “apparatus.” “This is an area of a lot of thunder and a lot of storm. Everyone began to melt the modem, ”he explains. “A neighbor’s ray fell and I gave myself to check it.”
“This is an area of a lot of thunder and a lot of storm. Everyone began to melt the modem “
Remember perfectly the labyrinthine baquelita plate, crowded with chips and circuit cities. Once the housing was unravel, clearly saw a black square melted on green plastic. “The microprocessor exploded,” was the diagnosis he offered to his neighbor. “This has no solution.”
“Repairing any of those plates is very difficult. It is not just about having a replacement but also of having a technique, fine hand, ”Pedro observes, not without pride: if he could not fix the modem it was not due to lack of ability. “These things are to discard them and buy new ones. Outside of Cuba it has to be very cheap, because the components really spoiled right away. ”
In the Cuban houses with Nauta Hogar, the weight of ten years of use, rematch and expenses begins to be too expensive. “The price is crazy if you start looking in the networks,” he says.
Georgina, a housewife in Sancti Spíritus, coincides with Pedro. “My modem broke down and started locating one on the purchase sites on-line”, He says. “In my house we share the internet with my sister. When they connect in the house next door, we do not enter, and vice versa. ”
His modem was recently damaged. The prices in the black market ranged from 15,000 pesos – of use, a bad business because it is not known what useful life time is left to 35,000, “new package and with all attachments”.
“In my house we share the internet with my sister. When they connect in the house next door, we do not enter, and vice versa ”
“Another thing is the speed,” Pedro laments. “I have done all kinds of tests and I still have to use Nauta Home outside peak schedule. Sit at eight o’clock at night so you can see if the equipment can reach the maximum speed of the contracted package. Of course not”.
Countless calls for relief to Etecsa technicians have convinced him of one thing: “They never know anything. If I claim for speed they tell me that everyone is connected. If I ask you about the poor service quality, even if you pay the most expensive option – I have four megabits, although they now offer eight – they claim that it is congestion. ”
The executive president of Etecsa, Tania Velázquez, said on January 17 that the Nauta Hogar service had only attracted 30,000 Cubans per year in the last four years (in 2024, only 459 requested it). In total, there are 290,000 Nauta Hogar contracts in the country. The growth of the service, lamented the official, is “a 1st 7.5%.”
Echoing these data, Girón commented This Monday with irony that those who signed that contract with the communicative monopoly were in their own right “Argonauts”. As the heroes of the Greek myth, Cubans face “an apparently impossible task”: connect to the Internet.
Etecsa, argued the article, suffers an incurable deficit of both modems and fixed telephones, two requirements for the installation of Nauta Hogar. The “endless coat of plaintiffs” in search of an answer faces the silence of the online services application, which Etecsa offers its customers.
Another problem, complains Girónis that “you pay for something non -existent”: when for some reason the service is suspended – especially for technical deficiencies of Etecsa – we must continue to pay or retire the Nauta Hogar.
“They never know anything. If I claim for speed they tell me that everyone is connected ”
In order not to lose service, Cubans resort to all kinds of “irregularities.” The newspaper exhibits the case of an Etecsa worker who, in Matanzas, put on sale on social networks a “Router For Nauta Hogar with all its accessories: is to get and connect. ” Another negotiator sold a modem “Like those of Etecsa”, TP-Link brand, at $ 120.
Resigned, the company’s own technicians – when they can – offer the service to install any modem if the client gets it on their own and requests assistance. Girón He says that even the territorial division of Matanzas is “preparing staff” to overcome any “idiomatic barrier” that hinders the installation of the teams, mostly Chinese.
In that province, if a house for sale has Nauta Hogar is added 500 dollars to the final price of the property.
A flood of additional problems, of context, affects those who still, ten years after installed, insist on trusting Nauta Hogar. In a country immersed in a perpetual energy crisis, the obstacle is obvious.
“They recently called my house in Etecsa to give Nauta Plus promotion, which offers up to eight speed megabits,” says Pedro. His answer, after a laugh, was: “And if I have no current, what do I do more speed?”
