The Cuban Telecommunications Company (Etecsa) incorporated new calling and messaging packages that are purchased separately through Transfermóvil, “without subtracting from the main balance” of users.
According to the company, customers can buy packages recurring 80 minutes for 480 CUP or 120 minutes for 690 CUP, as well as 200 SMS for 90 CUP using a bank card or the MiTransfer wallet. These services are now available throughout the country through the Transfermóvil application.
Five months from the price
The initiative, which seeks to “provide accessible alternatives that preserve the conventional balance,” appears four months after widespread unrest over the unpopular “but inevitable” measures that were announced on May 30.
Then, the state monopoly reported a modification in its offers that limits the national recharges that its clients can make to 360 pesos (CUP) for a month. That amount would only serve, in practice, to purchase plans up to 6 GB of mobile data, combined with minutes and SMS.
Above that amount, Etecsa sells “extra” offers both in CUP and in dollars (USD), although at much higher prices: in the case of “extras” in pesos, they range from 3,360 CUP for 3 GB (a scale that multiplies the previous price by more than 10) to 11,760 CUP for 15 GB. Meanwhile, offers in dollars range from 10 USD for 4 GB to 35 USD for 16 GB.
These measures made the University Student Federation (FEU) of six faculties of the University of Havana will express the next day his “dissatisfaction” with the way the new mobile data rates were implemented. Later, other faculties from all over the country joined the claim.
In mid-June, and in response to widespread dissatisfaction, Etecsa announced two new mobile data plans. The first, called “Additional”, will allow you to acquire 2 gigabytes (GB) for 1,200 pesos, while the second, a “Sector Plan”, will offer an additional 6 GB for university students.
The official statement highlighted that the commercial offer “took into account the criteria issued by various sectors of the population, where the request for a plan with a lower price than the EXTRA Data plans prevailed.”
Likewise, it was specified that the plan for students “will be identified in the purchase menu of Transfermóvil and Online Services with the name Sector Plan.”
The executive president of Etecsa, Tania Velázquez Rodríguez, explained on television that these measures were adopted “in an extremely critical situation due to the lack of foreign currency and the significant reduction in income in recent years, which prevents us from solving these difficulties.”
