Workers from Michels Corporation (the off island contractors who are here to install the underground cable for the BLAST program) and local subcontractors Happy Trucking were busy yesterday, laying the ducts for the fiber optic cable system in the Laulii area.

Michels project engineer Randy Thompson said during an initial interview that once their work is complete — hopefully by February 2015 — “a high quality telephone, television and internet system will be in place, a system that will be much more advanced than what exists now.”

Cable lines have already been laid in several areas including Satala, Pago Pago and other west side villages, including work in the Manu’a Islands.

Besides the weather, one of the main obstacles for the project is the existing underground utilities, which are not necessarily ‘mapped’, especially when changes have occurred.

If everything goes as planned, American Samoa will have one of the best fiber optic cable systems in the world once the entire project is completed, according to Michels’ officials.

The BLAST program, funded by the US Dept. of Agriculture (USDA) Rural Utilities Service (RUS), will transform the territory’s legacy copper network into an advanced Fiber-To-The-Premises (FTTP) infrastructure. Simply put, local residents and businesses will have access to this world-class network that will deliver significantly high-speed data, next generation voice services, and new Internet Protocol Television (IPTV).