Most Americans enjoy Internet through fiber to the home, find high-speed cable service, and even 4G wireless broadband. However, studies show that this is not the case for US Pacific territories that suffer high prices and slow download speeds.
Pacific territories have earned the distinction of having the most expensive Internet access in America. The best way to compare the services is the price of a megabit per second. Of the three U.S. Pacific territories, Guam is the most fortunate. It sits at the intersection of several major undersea telecommunications cables, so the DSL connection in Guam is similar to the prices paid by customers on the mainland.
The Northern Marianas Islands are only 100 miles north of Guam, yet their Internet is much slower, and their prices are nearly five times higher than those in Guam. In American Samoa, the situation is far worse. It cost $175 for 768 kilobytes, which is still considered dial-up speed for businesses, making American Samoa the most expensive Internet in America.
Studies show that slow connections and unaffordable pricing strangle economic development and prevent US residents in the Pacific from engaging in e-commerce, online learning, and telemedicine.
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All of this ignores the fact that places like American Samoa are thousands of kilometers from anywhere and have small populations. Sub-sea fibre is brutally expensive per head of population and unless some benevolent organisation will lay fibre for free the cost of bandwidth in the Pacific will always be high. It is simple economics and will extend the digital divide further in the absence of some form of aid based project.