“Where is that service?”: Cubans mock Cuba’s communications ministry over claim it can track signal boosters

Cuba’s Ministry of Communications (MINCOM) warned on Tuesday that it can locate the mobile signal boosters and repeaters that many Cubans install at home just to make a phone call or open WhatsApp. On the ministry’s own Facebook page, the response was mostly ridicule.

In the post, the ministry said the detection of these devices “is not random” and is carried out with systems that monitor the radio spectrum and identify equipment causing interference. When a device is found, it added, “the corresponding measures will be taken.” It did not say what those measures are or how large any fines might be.

MINCOM framed the issue as a matter of sovereignty: control of the spectrum, it said, belongs to “the Cuban Nation,” and protecting it is the job of the Technical Budgeted Unit for Radio Spectrum Control (UPTCER), the ministry body that authorizes imports of telecommunications equipment. The post ended with the hashtags #ConectadosALoNuestro and #ComunicaciónParaTodos.

“What interference, if there’s no connection?”

By the time this story was written, the post had drawn more than 500 reactions, most of them laughing emojis, and about 250 comments. Among the most popular, one user asked what interference there could be when there is no connection to begin with. Another simply asked where “that service” was. A third pointed out that the government tells people to find “creative alternatives,” then punishes them when they do.

Several comments mentioned Starlink: one user asked whether satellite internet also interferes with communications, and another saw the warning as “one more reason” to use it. The same day, Cubanos por el Mundo reported that the government had banned Starlink at foreign embassies in Havana.

How Cubans answered the ministry

Almost no one in the comments defended the measure. These are some of the replies, translated from Spanish:

“Okay, and it’s ETECSA’s job to guarantee a service that matches its prices. What an obsession with always pointing to an enemy, instead of dealing diligently with the problems.”

Arturo B., one of the most-liked comments

“But what interference are you talking about? THERE’S NEVER ANY SIGNAL.”

Sol A.

“SOVEREIGNTY LIES WITH THE PEOPLE. DID YOU FORGET THAT?”

Raudel R.

“600 meters from the telephone exchange, in the middle of the capital, we have no coverage, and the landline has been reported out of service since October 18.”

José Antonio C.

“The Ministry of Communications has to explain what ETECSA has spent our relatives’ dollars on. A year and a half after the brutal rate hike […] things couldn’t be worse, with total, absolute and complete lack of communication in much of the country.”

Romualdo B.

“ETECSA’s bad service is the fault of the repeaters and signal boosters people use, the power transformers break because of people who have EcoFlows […] it’s always someone else’s fault!”

Neobel P.

“Those repeaters went through Cuban customs and nobody stopped them.”

María S.

“In this capital you can’t even reach the fire department when there’s a fire, or call an ambulance in an emergency.”

Yvis D.

From a warning to “community surveillance”

The warning came three days after Pablo Morales Concepción, MINCOM’s territorial director of control in Cienfuegos, published an article against these devices on Nov. 7 in the official newspaper 5 de Septiembre. In it, he urged customs to tighten checks at points of entry and called on local government authorities to work with the ministry to identify devices installed in neighborhoods and the people who sell or install them. “Surveillance must be community-based,” he wrote.

For now, no regulation requires citizens to report their neighbors.

Importing repeaters has been banned since May

MINCOM Resolution 1/2026, published on May 21 in Extraordinary Official Gazette No. 66, bans imports of mobile signal repeaters. The rule updated the requirements for bringing telecommunications equipment into the country. Decree 42 of 2021, which implements Decree-Law 35, already set penalties for unauthorized use of the spectrum.

Why Cubans install mobile signal boosters

Cubans buy these devices because coverage from ETECSA, the state telecommunications monopoly, is weak or nonexistent in many parts of the country. During blackouts, many cell sites also go offline. In February, ETECSA’s director in Villa Clara, Roberto Pérez Morales, acknowledged on provincial radio station CMHW that most of the backup batteries at the cell sites had already failed and that there was not enough fuel for the generators. In 2022, Cubanos por el Mundo reported that the government was declaring these devices illegal without offering a solution to affected users.

This is not the first time. On Feb. 5, 2022, MINCOM warned in Granma that coverage amplifiers cause dropped calls, blocking and interference, and that using them is illegal in Cuba. Then, as now, the ministry blamed signal failures on users’ equipment.

Several commenters noted that blaming others for failures is a government habit. In April 2014, after the ZunZuneo program came to light, ETECSA reported more than 200 mass spam operations originating in the United States. Now MINCOM is targeting the devices Cubans install themselves to get a signal.

International indexes put Cuba at the bottom. In Ookla’s Speedtest Global Index for March 2026, Cuba ranked last of 153 countries for fixed broadband, with a median download speed of 3.83 Mbps, behind Syria and Afghanistan. It does not even appear in the mobile ranking. In the International Telecommunication Union’s ICT Development Index, released in late July, Cuba scored 46.9 out of 100, below Venezuela (58.6), the other country in the region the report places among the least digitally developed.

Four years after the 2022 warning, MINCOM is again talking about tracking and sanctions. Its post includes no plan to bring a signal to the areas where people have to find one on their own.

Starlink is banned even though it doesn’t use mobile phone frequencies

Starlink’s satellite internet runs on different frequency bands from mobile phones and does not rely on ETECSA’s cell sites. Even so, the government bans it with the same argument. On Nov. 9, Cuba’s Foreign Ministry (MINREX) told foreign embassies and international organizations accredited in Havana, in a diplomatic note, that they may not import or use Starlink terminals, again citing the state’s sovereignty over the radio spectrum. The measure, first reported by 14ymedio and confirmed by Martí Noticias with two diplomatic sources, leaves the missions tied to ETECSA’s network.

Starlink lets people go online without passing through ETECSA, the country’s only carrier, and therefore without state filters. Freedom House ranks Cuba among the five countries with the least internet freedom in the world, and the government has cut connections at moments of tension before. On July 11, 2021, amid a wave of protests, the island lost internet entirely for nearly half an hour, followed by hours of intermittent outages. The next day, Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram and Telegram were blocked, according to the watchdog NetBlocks.

The same complaint ran through the comments on MINCOM’s warning: every way Cubans find to get online on their own, whether a booster or a Starlink dish, ends up banned.

How we reported this story: We used artificial intelligence tools to research, check image rights and review the text, always under the supervision of our editors, who checked every fact against its source.