Customers of both BlueSky and the American Samoa Telecommunications Authority have complained about the inadequate phone service they have been experiencing for several weeks now.
Some of the common problems customers have reported include ASTCA calls to BlueSky or vice versa not connecting, dropped calls, off island callers having difficulty getting through to both ASTCA and BlueSky phones, some local and off island calls on ASTCA lines having a lot of static and dropped calls in parts of the island where phone connections used to be uninterrupted.
Tuala-uta Representative Vui Florence Saulo said many of her constituents have complained about interconnection issues between ASTCA and Blue Sky cell phones and she has communicated the complaints with both phone companies,
One resident of Tafuna who uses both BlueSky and ASTCA cell phones said the cell phone service used to be much better four years ago when ASTCA was under the old management.
He said the service is unacceptable and he doesn’t know why people are not demanding better service form the two companies.
A businessman also called KHJ News to register his disappointment with the poor standard of not only cell phone service but internet connectivity.
With several businesses, he said he depends on good telecommunications service for his business, especially in dealing with his suppliers off island.
The ASTCA customer says he’s wasting a lot of time because of slow internet service and it’s ironic that after a $100 million BLAST project, American Samoa lags behind other countries in the region in telecommunications.
The businessman who uses both ASTCA and Blue Sky says the two phone companies are doing a disservice to customers.
ASTCA says in its second quarter performance report that it successfully doubled internet bandwidth in mid December 2015 with the completion of the 03b Dual antenna system and integrating the additional bandwidth to the ring-network.
The report says installations continue with a target of up to 20% in new subscribers.
“The new 03b satellite service provides ASTCA wireless subscribers with much desired data capacity of up to 100 megabytes per second of internet bandwidth,” says the phone company’s report.
“Additional capacity distribution to cell sites are continuing.”
Regarding the BLAST project , ASTCA said fiber to home installations for Tutuila is slated to be completed by this month.
