Dealing with Hawaiian Telcom

29 Replies

About ten days ago, I finally got around to the task of changing my late mother’s telephone service. Yes, there’s still a Hawaiian Telcom landline installed in the Kahala house, and it’s well past time to do something about it. For now, I just want to change the account and billing into my name. Then we’ll decide whether to keep it in the longer term.

It’s turning out to be more difficult than expected.

First I thought I would just walk into one of their offices with all the estate paperwork and find out just what they might need to see. That’s when it dawned on me that Hawaiian Telcom no longer has any sales offices where customers can actually talk to people who know about their services.

So I phoned customer service. The person I spoke with said it would not be possible to change the billing without legal authorization. But instead of telling me what is required, he said I would get instructions in the mail. So I started watching the mail, and finally received their instructions about a week later.

The documents they need are straight forward, at least they seemed to be. And they provided a fax number for easy delivery.

That seemed quite reasonable. So yesterday I wrote a cover letter and scanned the documents. Today I went to send the fax….no answer. It seems that Hawaiian Telcom shuts down its business fax, along with the business offices, for the weekend. I’ll have to wait until Monday to see if the fax line really works.

So no sales offices. No way to deliver documents in person in order to avoid any problems. No access to their office fax over the weekend, when I have a bit more free time.

I’m beginning to see why Hawaiian Tel is struggling to compete. I had been thinking about moving to their services as an alternative to Oceanic, since it appears that you can save a few bucks, but now I’m not sure whether to even explore that option further. It isn’t necessarily easy to do business with them, or so it seems from my small sample.

Should I stick with it and seriously consider a Hawaiian Tel package with phone, Internet, and television? Or is Oceanic still the best bet? If you’ve got experience with their services and how they compare to Oceanic, please share!

Discover more from i L i n d

Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.

29 thoughts on “Dealing with Hawaiian Telcom”

  1. R Ferdun

    We signed up for Hawaiian Tel’s fiber to the home package of telephone, internet and cable TV earlier this year and have been very happy with it so far. I did quite a bit of comparing of services and prices and decided I could get better service for about the same price. Also, I have been waiting to kick Oceanic to the curb because they have been the monopoly cable provider for a long time and have acted like it continually increasing their prices and providing dismal customer service.

    The fiber based telephone service has been crystal clear and the internet service is about twice as fast. I get a few more TV channels that I wanted plus HD which would have cost more on Oceanic. Plus, as a promo I got whole house DVR free for life. When I called Oceanic to cancel my service the said why didn’t you call us first so that we could give you a better deal. My answer to them was that if there was a better price available they should give it to their customers before they are ready to cancel service.

    As an FYI for customers who are worried about their telephone service working during a power outage, the Hawaiian Tel fiber to the home installation includes a battery backup which will power your telephone service for up to eight hours during a power interruption. So they can still say “always on”. (well, mostly)

    Reply ↓
  2. aikea808

    I don’t own a TV or use a digital phone, but I really like Hawaiian Telcom for phone & DSL. Of course I’ve never tried to do anything ‘legal’ like you had to do.

    Have been with them for ages for the ‘always on’ capability of the landline, and now have their DSL, having switched from Earthlink cable (they used Oceanic’s lines) a few years back.

    The only real issue I’ve ever had with HTEL:

    We had trouble (my neighbor & I) on our line a while ago every time it rained hard, which, when you live Windward, is quite often in the wet season. They sent someone out pretty quickly the 1st time, worked on it, & we all thought it was fixed. Then came another big storm & it happened again. It took a little longer (3 days, IIRC), but they sent out TWO technicians this time – and they discovered that the 1st technician missed something. Anyway, they changed out the junction box in the overhead wires & we haven’t had an issue since.

    My experience with Oceanic (internet) was the polar opposite, even though they were ‘local’ – they often times weren’t nice, nor were they prompt. I gave up dealing with them & moved to DSL. Plus, every time we had power issues, I had no internet. Moving DSL solved that. I power my modem w/a battery back-up thing so now if the power goes off, I can get online w/my laptop.

    Reply ↓
    1. R Ferdun

      This was the same problem I was having in Manoa. When it rained the cable would get wet and we would have problems. I know from having worked for Hawaiian Tel that it was very unlikely that they were going to string new copper cables to solve that problem. That was one reason why I was anxious to get a fiber to my home because it was unlikely to be affected by the rain.

      Reply ↓
      1. dropper

        yup we dropped HTEL when our DSL was getting water in the line and stopped working. In my conversations with the tech at the time (4-5 years ago by now) it seemed like we could have been the only DSL subscriber in our whole subdivision.

        Reply ↓
  3. lowtech

    After multiple service interventions over a long period of time (awful!), I gave up on Oceanic for cable–plenty fast, but unreliable, with frequent interruptions in service and dropped voip calls. Hawaiiantelcom DSL is slower (I downgraded) but smooth and without interruptions so far. My issue, and this is really annoying, is that Htel will not permit porting of 808 numbers to mainland services, like Google Voice, Skype, etc. It is the only prefix in the country that cannot be so ported. So I have a Mainland number. I would LOVE to know why they are allowed this vice-grip on service.

    Reply ↓
    1. R Ferdun

      Because of technical switching considerations numbers are assigned in 10,000 blocks, i.e. nnn-xxxx. Whenever a customer dials an nnn number it is sent to the carrier’s local switching point for further processing of the xxxx portion. Therefor, the carrier needs to have a local switch. Also, numbers within each area code (e.g. 808) are limited. So, the NPA administrator for the area code is not going to assign a 10,000 block of numbers to a carrier who will only be using a couple of hundred. The remainder of the 10,000 numbers would not be available to any other carrier and thus would be wasted.

      The consequence of running out of numbers in an area code is that you would have to split the area code. There are a couple of ways to do that. You could assign the new area code to the neighbor islands while Oahu keeps 808. The problem is that the NI would probably not use all of the numbers in the are code for the next 100 years while Oahu would probably quickly use up the rest of 808. The other option is an overlay which would require 10 digit dialing for all numbers, even your neighbor across the street. Be careful what you wish for.

      Reply ↓
  5. Larry

    My VOIP number is from an out-of-state company but they got me an 808 number. A phone geek who no longer lives here told me there is really no problem, if you know how. I had to pay a small amount for the porting, which was arranged by some other unnamed local geek familiar with the process on behalf of the VOIP company. All together, it’s a great saving over HItel, and I’m told I could have found an even cheaper service.

    Reply ↓
  6. compare and decide

    Is there a way of getting ‘free’ Internet access?

    Here’s a New York Time’s article on wireless mesh networks, “Home Wireless Network Keeps the Snoops Away”.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/14/technology/personaltech/homemade-wireless-networks-keep-the-snoops-away.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&smid=tw-nytimes

    LIKE most people, Kim Thomas has a broadband connection at home that she uses to check email, surf the Internet and stream music and video.

    But unlike most people, Ms. Thomas, 56, a program director for a charitable foundation in Portland, Ore., has no monthly bill. All she did was buy a router and rooftop antenna , which not only granted her free access but also made her part owner of the infrastructure that delivers the signal. Total cost: about $150.

    Ms. Thomas is a participant in the Personal Telco Project, one of a growing number of community wireless mesh networks in the United States and abroad. These alternative networks, built and maintained by their users, are emerging at a time when Internet service providers are limited in number (some argue monopolistic) and are accused of cooperating with government snoops.

    “I watch friends who have cable and their bills just keep going up and they have no control but feel they are dependent on it,” said Ms. Thomas, whose husband and two college-age sons also use her home’s wireless mesh connection. “I feel like there are so many areas of your life that you have no control over and this is a nice piece in which you can.”

    Sign me up!

    But what exactly is a ‘wireless mesh network’?

    A wireless mesh network is essentially a network of a bunch of interconnected wireless routers, or nodes, which propagate traffic between users and also broadcast broadband service from nodes that are wired to the Internet. Think of it as a system of linked coffee shop hot spots where patrons at all the various coffee shops can send and receive data directly between each other’s devices, as well as surf the Web. Only you don’t have to go to a coffee shop and listen to annoying soft jazz to participate.

    “Our approach is to build our own autonomous system and actually allow people to participate in the Internet rather than participating by proxy through Time Warner, Google Fiber or any other retail I.S.P.,” said Isaac Wilder, executive director of the Free Network Foundation, which within the last year has managed to construct a wireless mesh network that serves about 500 people in Kansas City, Kan.

    Perhaps the largest and oldest wireless mesh network is the Athens Wireless Metropolitan Network, or A.W.M.N., in Greece, which was started in 2002 by people frustrated by the slow rollout of broadband in the city. The network now has more than 2,500 users throughout the metropolitan area and neighboring islands and offers speeds in some areas in excess of 100 megabits per second compared with the 4 to 7 megabits per second from typical residential cable and DSL connections in the United States.

    What’s fascinating is that a single local community network can get so large that there is no need for it to be linked to the greater Internet.

    “It’s really fast. But it’s ended up Internet access doesn’t matter for many users because the network has its own services,” said Joseph Bonicioli, an information technology professional who is the volunteer president of the association that oversees A.W.M.N. He said the organization had its own search engines, Voice over Internet Protocol services as well as “forums, social activity and content like video.” Some developers have used the network’s intranet as a testing ground before taking their concepts and applications live on the Internet.

    This is all newfangled technology.

    Community wireless mesh networks — no one tracks how many there are but it is probably in the thousands worldwide — owe their existence to relatively recent advances in wireless technology. A lot of these innovations actually come from radio astronomy, where new techniques in compression, amplification and error correction have made it possible to receive signals from distant stars, planets and probes and are just as effective, if not more so, terrestrially.

    “There have been some really incredible breakthroughs in the past 10 years,” said Sascha Meinrath, director of the Open Technology Institute, or O.T.I., at the New America Foundation in Washington, which has been the nexus for the wireless mesh networking movement through organizing international conferences and funding community projects.

    Last month, O.T.I. released its Commotion Construction Kit, which provides step-by-step instructions on how to set up a wireless mesh network using open source code and off-the-shelf routers and antennas. The kit is a synthesis of methods learned from the construction of community mesh networks.

    There’s a political side to this.

    Although available to all, O.T.I.’s focus has been providing the instruction to people living in repressive nations around the world, not to mention activists in the United States. Because mesh networks are autonomous from the wider Internet, they cannot be shut down by a government. The networks are also harder to surveil because of the way data pinballs unpredictably between nodes without any centralized hub.

    It is ironic given the recent revelations about National Security Agency spying that O.T.I. has received significant financial support from the State Department. “And thus you see the many facets of U.S. government,” said Mr. Meinrath. “The reality is that the exact same technology that protects human rights workers and democracy advocates overseas is going to be incredibly useful for preventing domestic snooping.”

    Of course, once you leave the mesh network’s confines and point your browser to Facebook or Google, all bets are off. You’re just as vulnerable to surveillance as anyone else. Like capillaries to an artery, mesh networks may ultimately connect to the Internet through typical residential or commercial Internet service providers like Comcast or AT&T.

    This can deliver more power, speed and stability than what a typical commercial ISP can provide.

    But increasingly mesh networks are linking directly to the Internet’s backbone to achieve greater speed and eliminate middlemen gateways and their restrictions. This is the case for the Freedom Network in Kansas City as well as many European mesh networks including FunkFeuer in Vienna, WirelessAntwerpen in Antwerp and Freifunk in Berlin.

    “We are bringing the backbone of the Internet all the way to the home router,” said L. Aaron Kaplan, a computer security specialist in Vienna who is a co-founder of FunkFeuer and its current vice chairman. “When there is decentralization of the Internet, it becomes more resilient.”

    A mesh network in the Red Hook neighborhood in Brooklyn, for example, maintained its broadband connection after Hurricane Sandy when most major I.S.P.’s in the area went down.

    It takes a certain amount of sense of community (peer pressure) for this system to work.

    Surprisingly, volunteer administrators of mesh networks said they had little problem with members abusing the service by say, running bandwidth-hogging programs like BitTorrent or sending spam. Either there are technological mechanisms that actively prevent that type of data transfer or people near the node that’s engaged in the activity start to complain about slower speeds so it’s not long before the culprit is found out and pilloried.

    “Social pressure works for us,” said Mr. Kaplan.

    Many mesh networks do not even have written user agreements, though administrators said it was understood that users were not allowed to generate undue traffic or interfere with traffic running through their nodes. To be safe, they suggest members use a virtual private network like WiTopia or VyprVPN on top of the networks’ baseline data encryption, which is advisable whenever using Wi-Fi at home or in a public space.

    In Portland, Ms. Thomas said she was not concerned. “This is a relationship-driven network where we’re all in it for the social experiment more than anything else,” she said. “We know there are risks, but we’ve seen the commercial networks aren’t immune to being hacked.”

    I wonder where this would work, locally. Perhaps it might work in a university setting. After all, it’s not just peer pressure that makes this work, it seems, but a certain insurgent anti-authoritarianism. And most suburban places anywhere are fairly complacent and conservative (“Might as well just go with the cable company….”). So one might expect this to work in Portland, Oregon, or Boston, or San Francisco, but not so much in Orange County.

    But that might not be true. The corporate-style suburban squares might take to mesh networks when the savings prove irresistible.

    For example, the equivalent of a wireless mesh network in terms of energy policy might be a microgrid that bypasses the utility. At a certain point, even corporate interests want to avoid getting exploited by an energy monopoly.

    From the Civil Beat article “Energy Certainty Can Start With Hometown Waimea”.

    http://www.civilbeat.com/voices/2013/10/21/20197-energy-certainty-can-start-with-hometown-waimea/

    Parker Ranch recently announced it has begun a comprehensive integrated resource planning process to evaluate its energy resources — with a major twist — prioritizing the study of a community microgrid for our hometown of Waimea.

    Waimea was here long before Parker Ranch. Over time, the sustainability of the Ranch, the oldest private business in the State of Hawaii, and the surrounding community of Waimea became closely intertwined through generations of hard work and a commitment to preserve our way of life, as carried on by many paniolo and their ohana. The long tradition of stewardship and of cultivating our natural resources can continue through a community microgrid, which could serve as a bridge to the future for successive generations.

    Parker Ranch has retained the team of Siemens PTI, Booz Allen Hamilton and Pace Global to conduct integrated resource planning and determine microgrid feasibility. Each has substantial experience working in Hawaii and will help formulate a comprehensive map of the potential for energy resources to be harnessed.

    Rather than struggle with energy instability, we could build a microgrid of “energy certainty.” A community microgrid can harness a variety of renewable generation sources and electrical loads in an interconnected system that will provide greater stability in concert with more sustainable local energy generation and storage. Ultimately, it has the potential to significantly lower energy costs to the community.

    Now what would the food security equivalent of mesh networks and microgrids be? Farmers’ markets? Home gardens? How viable is that? I’ve heard tales about people in Hawaii during the Great Depression buying only rice and living entirely off of their backyard vegetable garden. But that seems time consuming, and involves long-forgotten farming skills. It might be that hydroponic gardening would be more “user friendly” to the modern suburbanite. But that involves significant start up costs, costs that those who would most benefit from gardening (less affluent families) would find hard to bear.

    Any other equivalents?

    After 2017, global oil production is expected to decline. Any ideas? Any alternatives to tourism and the military?

    Reply ↓
  7. compare and decide

    Speaking of wifi, here’s an article by Walt Mossberg on the latest update on Republic Wireless’s attempt to market a smartphone that primarily uses wifi, “Smartphone With Wi-Fi Smarts: Republic Wireless’s Moto X Shows Wi-Fi Calls Can Be as Good as Cellular Ones”.

    http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303281504579222131917130744

    What if you could get a top-tier, current-model smartphone with all the bells and whistles, and pay between $5 and $40 a month for unlimited voice, text and data? And there’s no contract required.

    Well, you can if you sign up with an innovative carrier called Republic Wireless. Republic’s secret is it modifies brand-name phones so they place voice calls and send texts over Wi-Fi instead of more expensive cellular networks. That lets the company charge less per month and forgo contracts. And now it offers a top-tier phone, the Moto X from Motorola.

    When Wi-Fi is absent or too weak, Republic’s phones switch to Sprint’s S -0.25% cellular network for calling and texting. Cellular calls and texts don’t cost extra. If you start a call via Wi-Fi and keep talking as you leave Wi-Fi range, the call switches over to cellular.

    Most other smartphones can make Wi-Fi calls, but these typically require an app. Republic modifies the phone’s main dialer and texting functions to work over Wi-Fi whenever possible. You don’t have to do anything special to initiate a Wi-Fi call or text.

    Wouldn’t it be nice if downtown’s business district, all the universities and all the shopping malls had free wifi so we could use these kind of phones?

    But it’s been a bumpy road for Republic Wireless to get where it is today.

    Republic has been in business about a year, but its first offering had several drawbacks. First, it worked only with a clunky, limited phone, the Motorola Defy XT, which had skimpy memory, a small, low-res screen and only the older 3G cellular data network. Second, call quality over Wi-Fi was iffy, with audible echoes and some clipped words. Third, the handover between Wi-Fi and cellular was clumsy. The phone had to hang up the Wi-Fi call and redial over cellular.

    Now, all that has changed. I’ve been testing Republic’s latest, improved service on the Moto X, and it has solved all three problems. There are still a couple of drawbacks, but I can recommend it as an option for people who want to save on monthly bills and don’t mind being limited to a choice of a single modern Android phone.

    The first improvement is the Moto X, which came out in August. The Google-owned handset maker’s premier model has a vivid, 4.7-inch screen, fast 4G LTE data capability and 16 gigabytes of memory.

    Second, I found call quality over Wi-Fi to be very good. I heard no echoes or clipped words, and everyone with whom I tested it said the Wi-Fi and cellular calls were indistinguishable.

    Third, handing off calls between Wi-Fi and cellular networks is now truly seamless. Neither I nor the people with whom I was speaking could detect the millisecond pause when I left Wi-Fi range and the calls switched to Sprint.

    I used Republic’s modified Moto X in my home, in several Starbucks shops and in a few other public Wi-Fi locations. All of the calls worked fine, as did the handover as I kept talking while walking out of Wi-Fi range. My only glitch came at one of the Starbucks, where the phone had trouble with the Wi-Fi and it took several tries to connect.

    Battery life was decent: The phone lasted a full day on a single charge.

    Admittedly, buying the phone upfront can be a little steep.

    But it just might be worth it.

    Republic charges $299 for this Wi-Fi-centric Moto X. That’s much more than what traditional carriers charge with a contract. AT&T sells the same phone for $50 with a two-year contract.

    But Republic’s price is considerably less than the no-contract price carriers offer. Without a contract commitment, Sprint charges $550 for the Moto X.

    If you’re willing to pay more upfront, your monthly fees are much lower with Republic. The upstart carrier offers four service plans for the Moto X. The first is just $5 a month, for unlimited calls, text and data over Wi-Fi only. Under this plan, the phone can’t be used out of Wi-Fi coverage. The next plan, for $10 a month, gives you unlimited talk and text on both Wi-Fi and Sprint cellular, but only data on Wi-Fi, not cellular.

    The third, and most popular, plan, costs $25 a month for unlimited talk, text, and data on both Wi-Fi and 3G cellular. Finally, for $40 a month, you get unlimited talk, text, and data on both Wi-Fi and 4G LTE cellular.

    Over time, these lower monthly fees can more than offset the higher cost of the phone. Sprint says unlimited talk, text and data on its network is at least $80 a month for the unsubsidized Moto X.

    And Republic offers another cool feature: Twice a month, you can change plans right on the phone and the new fees will be pro-rated for the remaining days in the month. So if you opted for the $5 Wi-Fi-only plan, but you now need cellular coverage, you could switch on the fly to a cellular plan.

    Republic is also planning to offer a feature that lets you change your phone number, via its app on the phone.

    For the increasing number of people who are in Wi-Fi coverage most of the day, Republic Wireless might well make sense.

    Republic says it errs on the side of caution when placing calls. It will use cellular, which costs it more, if it judges the available Wi-Fi to be too unreliable for a good call. And it doesn’t try to switch you back to Wi-Fi if you start a call on cellular.

    So what are the drawbacks? For one thing, you can’t order the Moto X in colors, as you can with other carriers. And the Republic’s Moto X can’t be switched to other carriers, even Sprint, because it has been modified.

    Also, Republic has very limited customer service and relies mainly on its users to help other customers through online forums.

    Overall, however, Republic is offering a clever, modern service on a good smartphone, and is showing that Wi-Fi calls can be as good as cellular ones.

    So who is going to build the mesh networks which would accelerate the adoption of this kind of cellphone technology? Not everything is up to the state or the corporation. Also, it would not only be up to individual initiative, but community initiative. But most communities are conservative. What kind of community would embrace this kind of innovation, student government?

    Reply ↓

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.