Mobile communications and Internet in Samoa
Compared to the United States, Samoa is massively lagging behind in the development of telecommunications. Under the country code +685, there were a total of 75,000 connections in 2021. Among them were 69,000 mobile phones, which corresponds to an average of 0.32 per person. In the US, this figure is 1.1 mobile phones per person.With about 18,013 webhosts, Samoa is below the world's average by population. At the end of 2020, 102 of these, or about 1 percent, were secured with SSL or comparable encryption.
Back to overview: Samoa
Mobile phone rates in Samoa
Every year, the International Telecommunication Union calculates for many countries what a mobile phone contract costs to use. A monthly budget averaging US$ 19.50 was calculated Samoa in 2021. Compared to the previous year, this amount decreased by 10 cents.The ITU refers to the costs for monthly use and includes 140 telephony minutes, 70 text messages and a data transfer of 2 GBytes. The transfer speed should be the minimum of a 3G connection, i.e. at least UMTS, which is already outdated in many parts of the world. 2 GBytes do not sound much. However, this is already quite a high consumption in a worldwide comparison. If one does not take a fixed amount in US dollars, but converts it to the economic output per inhabitant, a user in Samoa spends 5.9% of his gross national income on mobile telephony. Worldwide, this rate is around 6.6 percent.
In the USA, the monthly cost was around $38.10.
Lack of network coverage with 5G
A modern 5G network does not yet exist in Samoa (as of 2021). The penetration rate of 4G, i.e., mobile communications with at least LTE speed, was recently 49 percent. In other words, 111,569.64 people in the country had to make do with a maximum Internet speed of the outdated UMTS standard (or even less).The following diagrams show the development of the various telephone and internet connections as a percentage of the country's population. Values above 100 percent mean that, on average, every inhabitant has more than one connection.
Access to the internet in Samoa from 1990 - 2021
Broadband internet in Samoa 2004 - 2021
Samoa is lagging behind in the expansion of broadband internet connections. Around 78 percent of all residents have access to the internet. Around 1 percent have their own fast internet connection, which is at least faster than the former ISDN (more than 256 kbit/s). All fixed connections via DSL, cable or satellite were counted here, but not those connected to the internet via mobile communications. Landlines 1990 - 2021
Mobile phones 1990 - 2021
| Distribution in 2021 | Samoa Total | Samoa percent | USA Total | USA percent |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Internet users | 171,173.49 | 78.25 % | 304.52 m | 91.75 % |
| Broadband users | 1,692.00 | 0.77 % | 125.89 m | 37.93 % |
| Landlines | 6,000.00 | 2.74 % | 97.82 m | 29.47 % |
| Mobile cellulars | 69,000.00 | 31.54 % | 361.66 m | 108.97 % |
Chinese - Worldwide distribution
The most severe earthquakes in the world