Communication services in

American Samoa American Samoa is an Territories of the United States, unincorporated and unorganized territory of the United States located in the Polynesia region of the Pacific Ocean, South Pacific Ocean. Centered on , it is southeast of the island count ...

are diversified among

telephony Telephony ( ) is the field of technology involving the development, application, and deployment of telecommunications services for the purpose of electronic transmission of voice, fax, or data, between distant parties. The history of telephony is ...

radio broadcasting Radio broadcasting is the broadcasting of audio signal, audio (sound), sometimes with related metadata, by radio waves to radio receivers belonging to a public audience. In terrestrial radio broadcasting the radio waves are broadcast by a lan ...

television Television (TV) is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. Additionally, the term can refer to a physical television set rather than the medium of transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertising, ...

, and

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the Global network, global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a internetworking, network of networks ...

services.

Telephone

Membership:

North American Numbering Plan The North American Numbering Plan (NANP) is an integrated telephone numbering plan for twenty-five regions in twenty countries, primarily in North America and the Caribbean. This group is historically known as World Zone 1, World Numbering Zone ...

(NANP) *Land lines in use: 10,400 (2004); ''country comparison to the world:'' 202 *Mobile cellular subscribers: 2,200 (2004); ''country comparison to the world:'' 210 *domestic services:

telex Telex is a telecommunication Telecommunication, often used in its plural form or abbreviated as telecom, is the transmission of information over a distance using electronic means, typically through cables, radio waves, or other communica ...

, telegraph, facsimile and cellular telephone services; domestic satellite system with one

Comsat Communications Satellite Corporation (COMSAT) is a global telecommunications company based in the United States. By 2007, it had branches in Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, Venezuela and several other countries in the Americas. Alt ...

earth station A ground station, Earth station, or Earth terminal is a terrestrial radio station designed for extraplanetary telecommunication with spacecraft (constituting part of the ground segment of the spacecraft system), or reception of radio waves fro ...

*international services: satellite earth station –

Intelsat Intelsat S.A. (formerly Intel-Sat, Intelsat) is a Luxembourgish-American multinational satellite services provider with corporate headquarters in Luxembourg and administrative headquarters in Tysons, Virginia, United States. Originally formed ...

(

Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five Borders of the oceans, oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean, or, depending on the definition, to Antarctica in the south, and is ...

)' *Country code: 1 *NANP area code: 684 *International telephone number format: +1 684 NXX-XXXX (''N=2–9'', ''X=0–9'') *international access code: 011

Radio

Radio broadcast stations: AM 0, FM 4 commercial, 4 non-commercial, 2 LPFM, shortwave 0 (2005) Radios: 57,000 (1997)

Television

Television broadcast stations: 4 (2006) Televisions: 14,000 (1997)

Internet

In 2009, American Samoa was connected to the Internet using the American Samoa Hawaii Cable (ASH) undersea communications cable that increased bandwidth from 20 Mbit/s to 1 Gbit/s. The project used a defunct PacRim East cable built in 1993 that previously connected Hawaii with New Zealand. The cable system now connects

Samoa Samoa, officially the Independent State of Samoa and known until 1997 as Western Samoa, is an island country in Polynesia, part of Oceania, in the South Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main islands (Savai'i and Upolu), two smaller, inhabited ...

to American Samoa and then to

Hawaii Hawaii ( ; ) is an island U.S. state, state of the United States, in the Pacific Ocean about southwest of the U.S. mainland. One of the two Non-contiguous United States, non-contiguous U.S. states (along with Alaska), it is the only sta ...

where it will connect to global submarine networks. In July 2018, the Hawaiki cable was activated with a branch providing a 200 Gb/s connection from Pago Pago to Hawaii, New Zealand, Australia, and Oregon.

Situation in 2016

In 2012, American Samoa had the most expensive Internet access service in the U.S. according to ''Engadget''. Under Governor

Togiola Tulafono Togiola Talalelei A. Tulafono (born February 28, 1947) is an American Samoan politician and lawyer who served as the sixth governor of American Samoa. He is a member of the Democratic Party. He had previously served as the seventh lieutenant gove ...

investment in a fibre optic network to replace aging copper infrastructure across all the islands of American Samoa and the construction in 2015 of a 1.2 Gbit/s satellite uplink via

O3b Networks O3b Networks Ltd. was a network communications service provider building and operating a medium Earth orbit (MEO) satellite constellation primarily intended to provide voice and data communications to mobile operators and Internet service prov ...

which more than doubled available bandwidth to the rest of the world resulted in broadband Internet service becoming more affordable, with the price of the cheapest available residential package decreasing from $75/month to $50/month and download speeds of the base package increasing from 256 kbit/s to 768 kbit/s. The improved connectivity to the outside world has revived previously stalled hopes that a call center could be opened in American Samoa, boosting the local economy.

Aleki Sene, Sr. Telecommunications Center

The Aleki Sene, Sr. Telecommunications Center in

Tafuna Tafuna () is a village in Tualauta County, Western District, American Samoa. It is the most populous village in American Samoa, with a population of 7,988 according to the 2020 U.S. census. Tafuna is the principal area for the development of hou ...

is the tallest building in

(it is 4 stories tall). Construction of the building began in 2009 and ended in 2011.http://www.sraa.co.nz/Projects/Commercial/ASTCA+Telecommunications+Building.html "ASTCA Telecommunications building - Swan Railley Architects". Retrieved September 4, 2019. Out of the tallest buildings of each U.S. state and territory, the Aleki Sene, Sr. Telecommunications Center is the shortest.

References

Economy of American Samoa Culture of American Samoa +American Samoa {{AmericanSamoa-stub