The American Samoa Government and Google have signed an agreement that sets the territory up to join Google’s Pacific Connect initiative through a new undersea cable project branded Le Vasa. The signing took place on 15 January 2026 at a luncheon at the Lee Auditorium, with Governor Pulaalii Nikolao Pula and Brian Quigley, Google Vice President for Global Network Infrastructure, named as the signatories.
“I’m excited to see our close collaboration with American Samoa and ASTCA come to fruition with the Le Vasa cable.”
Brian Quigley
Google Vice President for Global Network Infrastructure
ASTCA describes Le Vasa as an independent next-generation subsea fibre-optic system intended to interconnect with Bulikula, a Google-led cable system that links Guam and Fiji and forms part of a wider central Pacific connectivity build that also includes Halaihai (Guam–French Polynesia).
What Google is building in the Pacific and where Le Vasa fits
Google’s Pacific Connect programme is not a single cable; it is a sequence of projects that extend new fibre routes and add branching links for island jurisdictions that have historically relied on one primary path, limited capacity, and high wholesale costs. In January 2024, Google announced Bulikula (Guam–Fiji) and Halaihai (Guam–French Polynesia) as the core of its central Pacific push, in partnership with regional telecom investors and operators.
Tuvalu provides a recent example of the model. Its first international subsea connection, the Vaka cable, links Funafuti to the Bulikula trunk. That pattern matters for American Samoa, because Le Vasa is being presented in the same “branch into a larger ring” logic rather than a standalone cable to one destination.
What ASTCA and ASG say the project will do
Public statements around the signing describe three operational goals.
First, redundancy. American Samoa already has international connectivity through existing systems, including the Hawaiki network, which connects New Zealand, Australia and the United States and has been referenced as serving Pacific nations including American Samoa and Hawai‘i.
The case being made by government and ASTCA is that a second modern path reduces the “single point of failure” problem that becomes acute after storms, earthquakes, anchor drags, or landing-station incidents.
Second, lower cost and better performance. At a business-community event the day after the signing, Quigley described Pacific internet as “weak” and “very expensive”, and pointed to outcomes claimed for Tuvalu after Vaka went live: sharply higher usage, lower latency, and cheaper mobile data. Those figures were presented as proof that new subsea capacity can change retail pricing and service quality quickly once a market has real wholesale competition.
“Le Vasa will establish a foundation for long-term economic diversification and growth… strengthen redundancy… and bridge the digital divide.”
Brian Quigley
Google Vice President for Global Network Infrastructure
Third, integration into the existing network under local control. Talanei reported ASTCA as the “official contractual party and project coordinator”, with ASTCA expected to own and operate Le Vasa, manage landing points, and coordinate with global partners and technical standards.
Funding and basic economics
Cost and financing are still one of the open issues residents will watch closely.
Talanei reported that no technical capacity numbers were provided publicly at the signing, and cited a Senate reference to correspondence indicating a US$45 million cost estimate, with US$15 million linked to ARPA funding and questions raised about how the balance would be financed.
That framing is consistent with the broader Pacific pattern where a mix of public funding, development partners, and private capital is used to underwrite cables that would otherwise be hard to justify on population size alone.
How American Samoa could benefit in practice
If Le Vasa is built as described, the likely benefits are straightforward and measurable.
It should add another international route into the territory, improving continuity when one cable is impaired. It should also create more bargaining power in wholesale capacity purchases, which is the lever that typically determines whether households and small businesses see lower prices, larger data allowances, and better service quality. The other practical gain is latency stability —important for video calls, telehealth sessions, remote learning, cloud services, and any modern workflow where “good enough” internet is the difference between local opportunity and people having to leave.
There is also a regional angle. American Samoa sits between several Pacific markets that already interconnect through a patchwork of cables. A stronger, ring-style topology in the central Pacific can make it easier over time for neighbouring jurisdictions to establish more direct peering and transit options rather than hauling traffic the long way around through a single hub. That is not a promise in the agreement, but it is the direction these network designs normally support.
The control question and what “nefarious” looks like in a cable project
It is reasonable for the public to ask what a large foreign technology company gains by helping finance and shape submarine cable routes. The answer is usually not mysterious, but it does create real policy questions.
Google is a major consumer of international bandwidth for its own services (Search, YouTube, Cloud, AI workloads), and controlling fibre routes can reduce its costs, improve service performance, and create network resilience for its customers. This is part of a wider global trend where content and cloud companies increasingly invest directly in undersea infrastructure rather than leaving it entirely to telecom carriers.
That said, “control” is not one thing. The risks that matter for American Samoa are more specific:
A project can centralise leverage through ownership of landing stations, who controls fibre pairs, who decides interconnection terms, and how capacity is priced and sold. Another risk is strategic dependency: if the territory’s future upgrades and repair timelines depend heavily on one private partner’s priorities, local bargaining power can shrink over time, even if the initial deal looks favourable.
There is also the legal environment. American Samoa is under US jurisdiction, and any cable landing in US territory intersects with US licensing and national security review processes. In other Pacific Connect projects, reporting has described Google-related entities seeking authorisations connected to cable construction in US territories, which underlines that these builds sit inside geopolitics as well as engineering.
The practical way to keep the project clean is not to argue in generalities, but to demand clarity on a short list of terms: who owns the landing infrastructure, how many fibre pairs (or what share of capacity) is under ASTCA control, how wholesale pricing will be regulated or benchmarked, what open-access commitments exist, what cybersecurity and monitoring regime is in place, and what guarantees exist around maintenance and restoration timelines after a fault.
