
Mobile communications and Internet in Tuvalu
Compared to the United States, Tuvalu is massively lagging behind in the development of telecommunications. Under the country code +688, there were a total of 11,000 connections in 2021. Among them were 9,000 mobile phones, which corresponds to an average of 0.80 per person. In the US, this figure is 1.1 mobile phones per person.With about 145,158 webhosts, Tuvalu is well above the world's average. At the end of 2020, three of these, or about 0 percent, were secured with SSL or comparable encryption.
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Mobile phone rates in Tuvalu
Every year, the International Telecommunication Union calculates for many countries what a mobile phone contract costs to use. A monthly budget averaging US$ 34.70 was calculated Tuvalu in 2021. 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 The transfer speed should be the minimum of a 3G connection, i.e. at least UMTS, which is already outdated in many parts of the world. 2 GBytes do not sound much.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 Tuvalu spends 6.2% 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.
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 Tuvalu from 1990 - 2021
Broadband internet in Tuvalu 2004 - 2021

Landlines 1990 - 2021
Mobile phones 1990 - 2021
Distribution in 2021 | Tuvalu Total | Tuvalu percent | USA Total | USA percent |
---|---|---|---|---|
Internet users | 8,020.56 | 71.59 % | 304.52 m | 91.75 % |
Broadband users | 450.00 | 4.02 % | 125.89 m | 37.93 % |
Landlines | 2,000.00 | 17.85 % | 97.82 m | 29.47 % |
Mobile cellulars | 9,000.00 | 80.33 % | 361.66 m | 108.97 % |