A private television company in American Samoa, Malama TV, has stopped broadcasting until further notice.
Its Communications President says this is because Pacific Island Cable or PIC has decided to increase its lease access channel rate by 500 percent on a 30-day notice.
Fagafaga Daniel Langkilde says considering the coverage PIC has to offer, it's unreasonable.
He says they will just suspend their on air programming until early next year when the Federal Communications Commission broadcast licenses will be available again.
The television company was established five years to provide commercial broadcast television services to the community.
However, Fagafaga says at that time, the Federal Communications Commission put a freeze on all new TV licenses until all existing stations convert from analog to digital broadcasting.
The deadline for that conversion is February, 2009.
