``My wife got a call from her relatives in Miami. People are saying, let's get a call in before the service goes,'' said a Havana driver, Carlos, in his 40s.

Cuba's state-controlled telephone company, ETECSA, had set a target time of 12:01 am on Thursday (0501 GMT) to suspend service to Cuba operated by five US telephone carriers, including AT&T Corp and MCI WorldCom Inc that have withheld payments owed to ETECSA.

Circuits operated by two other US companies, Sprint Corp and Puerto Rico-based Telefonica Larga Distancia de Puerto Rico, were set to remain open because the companies are up to date with their payments, Cuba's government said.

``As these five haven't paid, we are going to cut their services,'' a Cuban telecommunications source told Reuters. ``If you have a seven-lane highway and you reduce it to two lanes, obviously there is going to be a jam.''

Cuba's communist government has said it fully supports ETECSA's decision.

The US government has recommended the US companies make the payments. US officials cite the importance to Washington's Cuba policy of increasing ``people-to-people'' contacts provided by the direct telephone services.

The cut-off will coincide almost exactly with the third anniversary of the February 24, 1996, incident in which a Cuban MiG fighter shot down two US-registered small planes over the sea North of Havana, killing four Cuban-American pilots aboard.

The incident inflamed tensions between Havana and Washington and led to a tightening of the long-standing US economic embargo against Cuba. It also prompted legal attempts in the United States by the families of the dead pilots to obtain compensation from the Cuban government.

The US telephone companies have withheld scheduled payments to Cuba while they await a ruling by US district judge James Lawrence King in Miami on whether the families can seize the companies' payments to Cuba as compensation.

At the announced deadline, ETECSA plans to suspend circuits operated by AT&T, MCI WorldCom, LDDS Communications, IDB Communications Group Inc and WilTel because they have failed to make payments to the Cuban-controlled company for telephone calls made in December. AT&T operates half of the 1,000 phone circuits linking the two countries.

ETECSA, a major telecommunications investment joint venture involving Telecom Italia SpA, has not made public the details of exactly how the cutoff will affect services.

``You will all find out on Thursday,'' said a company spokesman.

The services most affected by the cutoff were likely to be incoming calls to Cuba from Cuban-Americans living in the United States and hard-currency clients on the island with international dialing access, which includes the foreign community.

Most telephones in Cuban households are paid in Cuban pesos and do not have international dialing access.

Several million telephone calls between the United States and Cuba per year are handled by the US phone companies, which were authorised after 1992 to negotiate communications agreements with the Cuban phone company through special licenses under the US embargo.