Why residents of American Samoa can’t access 1 800 numbers for free was among a variety of telecommunications related topics that the Executive Director of the American Samoa Telecommunications Authority, Alex Sene Jr., was asked at a House Communications Committee earlier this week.
Manu’a faipule Vesi Fautanu Jr, queried why people in the territory cannot call 1-800 and 1-877 numbers for free.
According to Sene, the US phone companies like Sprint, Verizon and AT&T objected that free call service should not extend to American Samoa and the Federal Communications Authority did not authorize this free service for the territory. He said it was a business decision.
Fautanu said companies like Oceanic Cable and others in Hawaii are making it possible for customers to get cable tv and also make free calls anywhere, over the internet.
He was sure that ASTCA’s competitor BlueSky was on to this type of service and he was afraid that once BlueSky is able to provide this, ASTCa would be left behind.
Similar sentiments were expressed by Vice Speaker Fetu Fetui who told Sene that BlueSky is dominating the local market and ASTCA needs to catch up.
In response to the free internet calls, Sene said the market has changed dramatically and customers now connect with their relatives and friends on various platforms like Skype, Face Book etc.
He said ASTCA is no longer depending on revenue from long distance calls but is focusing on how to monetize from the internet.
Asked about the availability of cable TV Service which was one of the promised services through the Broadband Linking American Samoa Territory, Sene said for the time being they are concentrating on boosting internet capability and have delayed the cable service because there are some issues which need to be resolved first with the content providers like Netflix.
