Mobile communications and Internet in Tonga

Mobile phone rates in Tonga

Every year, the International Telecommunication Union calculates for many countries what a mobile phone contract costs to use. A monthly budget averaging US$ 13.30 was calculated Tonga in 2021. This is about the same value as in the previous year.

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 The transfer speed should be the minimum of a 3G connection, i.e. at least UMTS, which is already outdated in many parts of the world. 2 GBytes do not sound much.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 Tonga spends 3.1% 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 Tonga (as of 2021). The penetration rate of 4G, i.e., mobile communications with at least LTE speed, was recently 96 percent. In other words, 4,240.68 people in the country had to make do with a maximum Internet speed of the outdated UMTS standard (or even less).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 Tonga from 1990 - 2021

Broadband internet in Tonga 2002 - 2021

Tonga is lagging behind in the expansion of broadband internet connections. Around 72 percent of all residents have access to the internet. Around 6 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.

The increasing prevalence of cell phones and the simultaneous decline in landline phones clearly indicate a change in Tonga. While the number of landlines has fallen significantly in recent years, the spread of cell phones has risen to 61 cell phone subscriptions per 100 people at last count. Such a clear shift does not occur in all countries, but the trend points in the same direction internationally.

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