Region

The Pacific Islands' Internet Paradox: Why Data Crosses Three Oceans to Reach Samoa

Published: March 15, 2026

Imagine sending a message from Tbilisi, Georgia to Apia, Samoa. The straight-line distance is about 14,000 km — roughly the distance from London to Sydney. A fiber optic signal could cover that in about 70 milliseconds.

Our measurements tell a different story. Over 866 traceroutes from our Tbilisi probe, the average round-trip time to Samoa is 462ms. The worst measurement hit 1,279ms — over one full second. And every single packet follows the same absurd path: Georgia → Serbia → Italy → France → Singapore → Australia → Samoa.

That is not a typo. To reach a Pacific island 14,000 km to the east, your data first flies 10,000 km west to Marseille, then 10,000 km southeast to Singapore, then 6,000 km south to Sydney, and finally 5,000 km northeast to Apia. A journey of roughly 31,000 km to cover a straight-line distance of 14,000.

Three Islands, Three Paradoxes

We monitored five Pacific island nations from three probes in Tbilisi, Almaty, and Minsk. The results reveal a clear hierarchy of digital isolation:

Destination	Measurements	Avg RTT	Min RTT	Max RTT	Submarine Cables
Cook Islands	808	468ms	430ms	1,085ms	1 (Manatua)
Samoa	866	462ms	381ms	1,279ms	3 (Tui-Samoa, Manatua, SAS)
Tonga	847	436ms	338ms	1,404ms	3 (Hawaiki, Tonga Cable, TDCE)
Fiji	1,235	361ms	38ms	623ms	7+ cables
French Polynesia	1,021	311ms	113ms	496ms	5+ cables

The pattern is stark. French Polynesia, with five submarine cables and direct connections to the US mainland, averages 311ms. Fiji, the region's hub with seven cables, manages 361ms. But Samoa, Tonga, and the Cook Islands — despite having modern fiber optic cables — all average above 430ms.

Anatomy of a Packet's Journey to Samoa

Here is the actual hop-by-hop path of our worst-case measurement — 1,279ms from Tbilisi to Apia:

Hop	Location	Operator	RTT
1–5	Tbilisi, Georgia	JSC Global Erty (local ISP)	2ms
9	Belgrade, Serbia	Cogent Communications	35ms
10	Milan, Italy	Cogent Communications	52ms
11	Aix-en-Provence, France	Cogent Communications	61ms
13	Belmont, Australia	Cogent Communications	276ms
14–15	Sydney, Australia	Cogent Communications	295ms
16	Apia, Samoa	Vodafone Samoa	573ms
17	Apia, Samoa	Vodafone Samoa	549ms
18	Apia, Samoa	Vodafone Samoa	389ms
19	Apia, Samoa	Vodafone Samoa	897ms
20	Apia, Samoa	Vodafone Samoa	1,279ms

Two things stand out immediately. First, the route is operated by just two carriers: Cogent takes the packet from Georgia all the way to Sydney, then hands it to Vodafone Samoa for the final leg. Second, the Vodafone Samoa segment is wildly unstable — five consecutive hops within the same operator, the same city, and the RTT swings from 389ms to 1,279ms.

The Cogent Factor

Cogent Communications (AS174) is the invisible backbone of South Pacific routing. In our data, every route to Samoa, every route to Tonga, and most routes to Fiji pass through Cogent's network. Their standard path from the Caucasus follows a consistent pattern: Belgrade → Milan → Marseille → Singapore → Perth → Sydney.

Why does Cogent route through Singapore to reach the Pacific? Because Cogent operates on the Marseille–Singapore segment of major submarine cables, giving it direct access to Asian and Oceanian networks. From Singapore, they ride cables south to Perth and across to Sydney. It is the longest reasonable path — but it is Cogent's path, on Cogent's infrastructure, with no handoffs to third parties until the very last mile.

This is the same logic we documented in our NTT routing analysis: Tier 1 carriers prefer routing through their own infrastructure, even when that means crossing extra oceans, over handing traffic to a competitor who might offer a shorter path.

The Tonga Surprise: Routed Through Samoa

Tonga has its own submarine cables — the Tonga Cable connects Nuku'alofa to Fiji, and the Hawaiki cable provides a direct path to New Zealand. Yet our traceroutes tell a different story:

Every measurement to Tonga from our probes follows the exact same path as Samoa — through Cogent to Sydney, then through Vodafone Samoa's network in Apia, and only then onward to Tonga. The path column in our database reads: GE→RS→IT→FR→SG→AU→WS — note the WS (Samoa) at the end, even though the destination is Tonga.

This means Tonga's international traffic is transiting through Samoa. Despite having its own cables, the routing agreements in place send European traffic through Apia first. It explains why Tonga's maximum RTT (1,404ms) is even worse than Samoa's (1,279ms) — it inherits all of Samoa's instability plus an additional hop.

Cook Islands: The Los Angeles Detour

The Cook Islands present a different pattern entirely. While Samoa and Tonga route through Singapore and Australia, Cook Islands traffic takes a transatlantic detour through the United States:

Hop	Location	Operator	RTT
1–2	Almaty, Kazakhstan	Signal Telecom	3ms
6	Astana, Kazakhstan	JSC Transtelecom	8ms
7–8	London, UK	RETN Limited	29ms
9	Vienna, Austria	RETN Limited	79ms
10	Neu-Isenburg, Germany	GTT Communications	87ms
11	Los Angeles, USA	GTT Communications	225ms
12	Papeete, French Polynesia	GTT Communications	320ms
16	Faaa, French Polynesia	ONATI	719ms

From Almaty to the Cook Islands: Kazakhstan → London → Vienna → Los Angeles → Tahiti → Rarotonga. The path makes geographic sense in one way — the Manatua cable, which is the Cook Islands' only submarine cable, terminates in French Polynesia, and French Polynesia connects to the US via the Honotua cable. But it means that a packet from Central Asia must cross the Atlantic, traverse the entire United States, then cross the Pacific to Tahiti, and finally take the Manatua cable southeast to Rarotonga.

The Cook Islands got their first submarine cable only in July 2020 — Manatua was the very first fiber optic connection, replacing satellite links that had served the islands since the 1960s. Before Manatua, a simple web page load from the Cook Islands could take 10–15 seconds. The cable was built by a unique consortium of four Pacific nations and funded partly by the Asian Development Bank and New Zealand Aid.

But having a cable and having good routing are two different things. The Cook Islands' single cable connects to Samoa and French Polynesia. From there, traffic must traverse either the Cogent path through Singapore or the GTT path through Los Angeles. There is no direct path to Australia or New Zealand — the two countries where most Cook Islanders have family and where 75% of tourists originate.

The Vodafone Samoa Problem

The most dramatic finding in our data is not the routing path — it is what happens inside Vodafone Samoa's network. Look at the RTT progression within Apia:

Hop	RTT	Delta from previous
Sydney → Apia (hop 16)	573ms	+278ms
Apia internal (hop 17)	549ms	−24ms
Apia internal (hop 18)	389ms	−160ms
Apia internal (hop 19)	897ms	+508ms
Apia internal (hop 20)	1,279ms	+382ms

Five hops within the same city, the same operator, and RTT swings by nearly 900 milliseconds. This is not normal network behavior. For comparison, Cogent carries the packet from Tbilisi to Sydney — a distance of over 25,000 km through seven countries — with smooth, predictable RTT increases at each hop.

The likely explanation is severe congestion or bufferbloat within Vodafone Samoa's local infrastructure. When router queues fill up, packets wait in line, and the waiting time adds hundreds of milliseconds of artificial delay. This is a solvable problem — but it requires investment in local infrastructure that a small island operator serving 200,000 people may struggle to justify.

Our measurements show this instability is persistent, not occasional. Across all 866 Samoa measurements, RTT ranges from 381ms to 1,279ms — a 3.4x variation. For comparison, our measurements to French Polynesia vary from 113ms to 496ms (4.4x), but with a much lower baseline.

The Cable Infrastructure Gap

Looking at our submarine cable database, the connectivity disparity becomes clear:

Fiji sits at the center of the Pacific cable network with seven international submarine cables including Southern Cross (to New Zealand and US), Southern Cross NEXT, Tonga Cable, Tui-Samoa, and several regional links. It functions as the Pacific's routing hub.

Samoa has three cables — Tui-Samoa (to Fiji, operational 2018), Manatua (to French Polynesia and Cook Islands, 2020), and SAS (to American Samoa). The Tui-Samoa cable was Samoa's first submarine cable, replacing complete satellite dependency. Before 2018, bandwidth in Samoa cost over $160/Mbps/month — it has since dropped by over 90%.

The Cook Islands have exactly one cable — Manatua. Before July 2020, they relied entirely on satellite. Manatua connects them to Samoa, Niue, and French Polynesia in a chain topology, meaning a single cable break could isolate them entirely.

Tonga has the Tonga Cable (to Fiji) and a spur from Hawaiki (to New Zealand), plus the domestic TDCE cable connecting its islands. In January 2022, the eruption of the Hunga Tonga–Hunga Ha'apai volcano severed the Tonga Cable, leaving the country with almost no internet for weeks — a stark reminder of how fragile single-cable connections can be.

What Would Fix This?

The fundamental problem is not a lack of cables — it is a lack of direct routing to the places that matter. For Samoa and the Cook Islands, the most important destinations are Australia and New Zealand (family, tourism, business) and the United States (cloud services, content). Yet traffic from Europe and Asia reaches these islands only after traversing Cogent or GTT's global backbone.

Three developments could transform Pacific island connectivity. First, direct peering at Sydney or Auckland with major content providers would allow local traffic to stay local rather than transiting through Singapore or Los Angeles. Second, new cable projects like the planned Southern Cross NEXT extension could provide Samoa with direct US connectivity bypassing the current multi-hop chain. Third, local infrastructure investment — particularly addressing the congestion issues visible in Vodafone Samoa's network — could dramatically reduce the RTT instability that plagues the last mile.

Until then, a packet from Tbilisi to Apia will continue its 31,000-kilometer odyssey across three oceans, six countries, and two carriers — arriving, on a good day, in under 400 milliseconds, and on a bad day, in over a second.

Data based on 4,777 traceroute measurements from GeoCables probes in Tbilisi (Georgia), Almaty (Kazakhstan), and Minsk (Belarus) collected between February 27 and March 15, 2026, using RIPE Atlas infrastructure.