Its very sad they have a valid official reason, adds to its credibility, but its a fake one.
At the prices they are charging for the dialup access (60 CUC/80hrs per month) (72USD per 80h per month) they can afford to resell satellite bandwidth no problem at all.
Ok, we dont have internet, what about investing in our local intranet, local websites, local ISPs, local IRC servers.... people are willing to pay, just look at what we pay for cell phones, and the demand is so high the network collapses every now an then.....
The cuban goverment is very clever (nothing original), always operating behind a cloak of technical reasons, the first step of all dictators in history is to size the mass media.