American Samoa Telecommunications Authority (ASTCA) will host tomorrow a ‘Blessing Ceremony’ for the long anticipated Broadband Linking the American Samoa Territory (BLAST) Project. The ceremony starts at 10a.m. at the Michels Corporation Lot in Tafuna, across from the Veterans Memorial Stadium.

In a statement ASTCA said it feels that a “Blessing Ceremony” is more appropriate instead of a “Ground Breaking”, since technically, the project has been on going for some time now.

Additionally, the ceremony is simply to thank the individuals, businesses and government agencies that have played a vital part in initiating and carrying out this project. The engineering team from Michels Corporation, the contracted off island company which will head the construction of the fiber optic cable system to local homes and businesses, has arrived in American Samoa and are ready to start drilling.

The Blessing Ceremony will serve, as a public notice in itself that BLAST is now only a few steps closer to launch and high-speed broadband Internet services will be available on our island soon

Funded with federal stimulus money, the BLAST project will transform the islands’ legacy copper network into an advanced Fiber-To-The-Premises (FTTP) infrastructure.

In other words, said ASTCA, residents as well as businesses in American Samoa will have access to this world-class network, which will deliver significantly high-speed data, next generation voice services and new Internet protocol television (IPTV).

The BLAST Project will bring many opportunities of advancement to the territory, especially for the economy, it says.

Source: ASTCA media release