The American firms have been withholding funds since December pending a
                  federal court case against the communist nation. The lawsuit involves
                  relatives of four Cuban-Americans whose two unarmed aircraft were shot
                  down by MiG jets north of the island in February 1996.

                  Service was cut off just after midnight. Cellular telephone service was also
                  interrupted.

                  Callers attempting to reach the United States instead got a recorded
                  message saying that lines were congested and asking them to call back later.

                  Some calls did get through after the deadline passed, apparently because
                  they were rerouted through third countries or onto Sprint telephone service,
                  which was not affected.

                  AT&T spokesman Gustavo Alfonso said there was minimal disruption to his
                  company's service early today because the calls were rerouted through other
                  countries.

                  But Alfonso added that few calls normally go out after midnight, and the true
                  test will come later today. "We're anticipating that it will" continue to work,
                  he said.

                  Cuba's Foreign Ministry announced last week that it supported the decision
                  by Empresa de Telecomunicaciones de Cuba S.A., known as ETECSA, to
                  cut service to the American phone companies AT&T, MCI, LDDS, IDB
                  and YWILTEL.

                  Service to Sprint and TLDI of Puerto Rico was maintained because both
                  have continued to pay their bills, the government said last week.

                  In 1997, a federal judge in Miami awarded a $187 million judgment to the
                  relatives of the Cubans who were shot down. Since then, they have tried
                  unsuccessfully to collect the money from the Cuban government.

                  They were spurned in an effort to recover the funds from Cuban assets
                  frozen in the United States. They then sought to tap into the money being
                  paid to ETECSA by the U.S. telephone companies for long-distance calls
                  from the United States to Cuba. That amounted to an estimated $60 million
                  to $70 million in 1997.

                  The State Department has opposed the families' case.

                  State Department spokesman James Foley said this week that the
                  telecommunications payments cannot be seized because the Cuban
                  telephone company is a separate entity from the government and is not
                  legally responsible for the debts of the two defendants in the case -- the
                  Republic of Cuba and the Cuban Air Force.

                  The families' request to garnish the telephone payments is being considered
                  by U.S. District Court Judge James Lawrence King. The judge said he
                  would rule after Friday, the deadline for attorneys to file additional motions.