Though

Guam Guam (; ch, Guåhan ) is an organized, unincorporated territory of the United States in the Micronesia subregion of the western Pacific Ocean. It is the westernmost point and territory of the United States (reckoned from the geographic cent ...

is a

United States territory In the United States, a territory is any extent of region under the sovereign jurisdiction of the federal government of the United States, including all waters (around islands or continental tracts). The United States asserts sovereign rights for ...

, some U.S. long-distance plans and courier services list Guam as an international location. As a result of Guam's being added to the North American Numbering Plan (NANP) in 1997, calls made to the U.S., Canada, or other participating countries from Guam (or to Guam from other NANP locations) only require the caller to dial a 1 followed by the area code. In this way, only domestic charges are incurred between the US and Guam on most carriers. Before Guam's inclusion, calling the U.S. required dialing the international 011 first, thus resulting in higher long-distance rates and less frequent calls to the U.S. by relatives in Guam. Prices of long-distance calls to these destinations have dropped significantly to the point where now calling the U.S. from Guam or calling Guam from the U.S. costs the same.

Mail

Some companies in the U.S. mainland still treat Guam as a foreign country and refuse to sell and ship items to Guam. However, if an item is shipped via USPS, shipping costs to Guam are the same as coast-to-coast shipping costs within the US. Many others will ship to Guam but will charge the shipping as an international destination. This is mainly because the company is using a private shipping company like UPS, FedEx, or DHL for its shipping. Much of the mail to and from Guam routes through Hawaii and awaits cargo space on United Airlines which is contracted to deliver mail between Hawaii and Guam.

Telephones

Telephones – main lines in use: 85,000 (2007) Telephones – mobile cellular: 98,000 (2007) Telephone system: : ''domestic:'' GTA: ~70,000 local access lines, dial-up and DSL, Internet, long-distance service, TDMA and GSM wireless services via Pulse Mobile & Docomo Pacific (formerly Guam Wireless) ChoicePhone LLC, dba iConnect with iDen, GSM and 4G LTE networks. : ''international:''

satellite A satellite or artificial satellite is an object intentionally placed into orbit in outer space. Except for passive satellites, most satellites have an electricity generation system for equipment on board, such as solar panels or radioi ...

earth stations – 2 Intelsat (Pacific Ocean); submarine cables to United States, Japan and Australia. : ''international access code:'' +1.671 (in the

North American Numbering Plan The North American Numbering Plan (NANP) is a telephone numbering plan for twenty-five regions in twenty countries, primarily in North America and the Caribbean. This group is historically known as World Zone 1 and has the international calling ...

Area code 671 The area code 671 is the local telephone area code of the United States territory of Guam. It was created with the beginning of permissive dialing on July 1, 1997, replacing Guam's previous International Telecommunication Union country code 671 at ...

)

Radio and television

Radio broadcast stations: AM 4, FM 7, shortwave 2 (2005) Radios: 300,000 (2007) Television broadcast stations: 8 (2007) Televisions: 200,000 (2007)

Internet

Internet Service Provider An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides services for accessing, using, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, non-profit, or otherwise privat ...

s (ISPs): 4 (2013)

Country code Country codes are short alphabetic or numeric geographical codes (geocodes) developed to represent countries and dependent areas, for use in data processing and communications. Several different systems have been developed to do this. The term ...

(Top-level domain): GU

Submarine cables

Because of its location in the western Pacific and its status as U.S. territory, Guam has one of the most extensive submarine communications cable infrastructures in the Asia-Pacific. The

2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami The occurred at 14:46 JST (05:46 UTC) on 11 March. The magnitude 9.0–9.1 (M) undersea megathrust earthquake had an epicenter in the Pacific Ocean, east of the Oshika Peninsula of the Tōhoku region, and lasted approximately six mi ...

cut many of the primary cables connecting the United States and Asia, prompting companies to look for alternate locations for new cables. In 2019,

GTA Teleguam GTA Teleguam (GTA) is the principal telecommunications company in Guam, providing telephone, cellular, internet and television services to residents of the island. The firm is based in Tamuning. The majority owner of GTA Teleguam is the Japanes ...

and RTI Cable built the island's first combined neutral cable landing station and data center. This coincided with a bill introduced to the Legislature of Guam by Sen. Telo Taitague to conduct an economic study and develop policy recommendations on submarine cables. GTA also seeks to attract U.S. companies to build data centers on Guam, noting the reduced

network latency Network delay is a design and performance characteristic of a telecommunications network. It specifies the Latency (engineering), latency for a bit of data to travel across the network from one communication endpoint to another. It is typically ...

from Asia to Guam, compared to the U.S. Existing cable landing stations and their cables are: * Tanguisson cable landing station in

Tamuning Tamuning, also known as Tamuning-Tumon-Harmon ( ch, Tamuneng) is a village located on the western shore of the United States territory of Guam. The village of Tamuning is the economic center of Guam, containing tourist center Tumon, Harmon Indu ...

Asia-America Gateway The Asia-America Gateway (AAG) is a long submarine communications cable system, connecting South-East Asia with the mainland of the United States, across the Pacific Ocean via Guam and Hawaii. The cable is capable of delivering up to 2.88 Tbit ...

, Australia–Japan Cable and Guam-Philippines *

Tumon Bay Tumon Bay is a bay in the United States territory of Guam, opening to the Philippine Sea. It is bounded to the north by Two Lovers Point and to the south by Ypao Point. The entirety of the bay falls within the Tumon Bay Marine Preserve, also known ...

cable landing station in Tamuning: TPC-5CN, Australia–Japan Cable * Tata

Piti Piti may refer to: * Pīti, a mental factor in Buddhism * PITI, the principal, interest, taxes, and insurance sum of a mortgage payment * Piti (food), a soup dish of Central Asia * Piti (footballer) (born 1981), Spanish footballer * Piti, Guam * Pi ...

cable landing station: VSNL Transpacific, Tata TGN-Intra Asia, and

Pipe Pacific Cable PIPE Pacific Cable (PPC-1) is a submarine cable laid by PIPE Networks. It runs from Cromer, New South Wales, in Australia, to Piti, Guam. It resulted in huge international backhaul cost savings to Australian customers, for access to the US i ...

-1 * GTA Piti-I cable landing station: SEA-US, Japan-Guam-Australia South * Gateway Network Connections neutral cable landing station and data center in Piti: HK-G, Japan-Guam-Australia North, SxS Cable System * Unknown landing station: HANTRU-1 Retired cables landing on Guam include China-US Cable Network and PacRimWest.

References