Summary

  • Samoa’s Order 2026/T01 approves separate 36-month capacity leases and 15-year capacity IRUs on the Tui-Samoa cable. Those are different commercial commitments, not interchangeable prices.
  • The domestic lease table charges per Mbps per month but prints its capacity bands with mixed “GB”, “Gb” and “Gbps” notation. The IRU table gives quarterly payments of one-twelfth of the base price without stating the number of installments.
  • The 2026 offer also lists 4% annual O&M for IRUs, while its purchase agreement describes quarterly cost allocation across activated capacity. Until the public schedule reconciles the unit, payment count and O&M basis, lower quoted base prices cannot establish an all-in saving or lower retail bills.

Approval is a forecast, not a price receipt

On 22 January 2026, Samoa’s Office of the Regulator approved the revised Reference Interconnection Offer of Samoa Submarine Cable Company (SSCC), replacing its 2024 order. The regulator said the offer was fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory, and expected it to promote competition, lower internet prices and improve service quality. Those are the order’s stated rationale and forecast. The order does not report a later retail price comparison, capacity purchase or service-quality result.

The distinction matters because the offer sits upstream. It gives licensed service providers the terms on which they may buy access to SSCC’s cable network. Under the Telecommunications Act, a reference offer is submitted for regulatory approval and publication. SSCC’s RIO says the commercial relationship becomes binding when a provider signs either a Capacity Lease Agreement or a Capacity Purchase Agreement. The public schedule is therefore an entry point to a negotiated contract, not a retail tariff for households.

Two products carry two clocks

The lease schedule prices recurring wholesale capacity by Mbps per month. For international Tier 1 Samoa–Fiji connectivity, SSCC lists a single 36-month term: 300 Mbps at US$44 per Mbps each month, 500 Mbps at US$35, 1,000 Mbps at US$27.50, 3,000 Mbps at US$24 and 5,000 Mbps at US$22. The domestic Upolu–Savaii schedule also uses monthly per-Mbps charges and a minimum 36-month commitment, with rates from SAT$7 to SAT$2.50 across its capacity bands.

The domestic band labels are not consistently expressed as a rate. The published RIO prints “Up to 1GB,” then variants such as “1GB - 2.5 GB” and “2.5Gb to 5GB,” while other copies use “Gbps” in some rows. A gigabyte is a data quantity; Gbps is a transmission rate. The price column is explicitly per Mbps per month. The intended band unit may be obvious to the authors of the schedule, but readers should not silently convert the text: the correct capacity threshold changes which rate a buyer believes applies.

The IRU is a different horizon again. The 2026 charge book lists 10 Gbps for 15 years at a US$12 million base price and 20 Gbps for 15 years at US$15.12 million, both for Samoa/Fiji/Sydney. It says the base price is paid quarterly in installments of one-twelfth. The line does not say how many quarters are included. SSCC’s standard purchase agreement leaves the first payment, later payment amounts and dates to a customer-specific Schedule 1. Until that schedule is filled, the published charge line does not show a complete payment calendar.

A lower base price is not the whole bill

The earlier SSCC RIO, version 1.1, priced the same 15-year 20 Gbps IRU at US$20 million and the 10 Gbps IRU at US$12.096 million. It specified 24 quarterly payments over the first six years and 3% annual O&M. The 2026 base price for 20 Gbps is US$4.88 million lower; for 10 Gbps it is US$96,000 lower. The new charge book lists O&M at 4% per year. A comparison of base prices alone therefore leaves both the payment schedule and the operating charge outside the headline.

The contract makes the operating-cost question more specific. Its O&M clause calls for quarterly invoices in advance. Schedule 3 allocates expected network maintenance costs across activated purchased and leased capacity, using the customer’s activated capacity as a share of the total. The charge book’s 4% annual O&M line is not reconciled in the public text with that quarterly cost-allocation formula. The documents reviewed do not establish whether the percentage is a cap, a separate basis, or shorthand for another calculation.

The right conclusion is that the relationship needs an explicit explanation, not that either number is wrong.

These gaps make a total-cost comparison unavailable. The offer also states that charges are in US dollars unless otherwise specified and exclude VAGST and other taxes. A service provider would need its signed schedule, activated capacity, recurring O&M calculations and tax treatment to price the actual commitment. A reader cannot infer any of those from a base-price row.

That is also why the regulator’s retail-price forecast should remain a forecast. Lower or clearer wholesale terms can support competition, but the public documents do not show how much capacity operators will buy, what other access and backhaul costs they face, or whether savings reach subscribers. Nor do they show measured service quality after the offer took effect.

Heng Lu Note 32 supplies a narrow editorial lens about making accountability visible when institutional decisions have economic consequences. It is not evidence about Samoa or the cable offer. Here, the practical test is whether a licensed operator can audit the same unit, term and cost basis that the regulator approved.

Sources