Cuba’s Telecommunications Monopoly Still in a Tight Spot

Cuba's Telecommunications Monopoly Still in a Tight Spot
September 11, 2014
Luis Rondón Paz

HAVANA TIMES – Cuba's new mobile phone email service continues to be
highly deficient owing to "jamming of the lines", and no announcement as
when this will be fixed has been made.

I have sporadically contacted CUBACEL's customer services line to let
them know the problems I'm having. I have informed them of the
difficulties I've encountered whenever I try to send an email using my
cell's Nauta account, and that there are times during the day when text
(SMS) messages cannot be sent, take long to be delivered and sometimes
never reach the addressee (even though the nine cents are still deducted
from my balance).

Repeatedly, they have replied that "the servers are jammed and changes
to the technical infrastructure have been made recently. Please be
patient, we're working on it."

Cuba's telecommunications company (ETECSA-CUBACEL) broadened its range
of services for the population some time ago. Some of the more
noteworthy changes were the possibility of accessing the Internet and
sending emails from computers at newly-opened centers of this State
monopoly, and an email service (Nauta) for mobile phones. The latter was
quite novel for Cubans and promised to make communication quicker and
more affordable, provided customers limited themselves to sending
messages and photos no larger than one Megabyte.

That was the idea, but reality proved entirely different. The quality of
the email service offered by Nauta in recent weeks is one case in point.
According to ETECSA officials, problems affecting the quality of the
service have been reported since September 3. I know, however, that the
problems began well before, having long experienced difficulties sending
and receiving emails using my mobile phone.

This past 8th of September, I again phoned Customer Services in the
hopes of getting some good news. Unfortunately, when I got through, the
operator informed me that, currently, the company does not know whether
there will be any immediate solution to the poor quality of mobile phone
services – services, incidentally, that are charged in hard currency.

Source: Cuba's Telecommunications Monopoly Still in a Tight Spot -
Havana Times.org - http://www.havanatimes.org/?p=106108