HawaiianTel in Leilani?

[1voyager1]

It's been over a year since I began this thread.
Just go a flyer in the mail from Hawaiian Telcom.
They're announcing our now being able to get 500Mbps i-net.
Decisions, decisions, decisions, ... not just talk anymore.

We now get plain old i-net and good weather landline telephone for ~$60+/mo.
HT is offering 500Mbps for ~$40/mo.
I assume land line will add about ~$20/mo bringing it up to a competitive ~$60/mo.

Q1.
What kind of speeds are people in Leilani actually getting for I-net from HT's new optical fiber lines?

With Spectrum, SpeedTest says we're getting 67Mbps up and 5.97Mbps down.

Q2.
To have a phone even when the power goes out, we need the POT copper line connection, correct?

[HereOnThePrimalEdge]

Q2.
To have a phone even when the power goes out,

There are multiple scenarios.
During Iselle landlines in HPP were down for a month. They had to replace all of the wiring after the storm.
My cell phone worked, and I charged it from my car. The cell towers should have backup generators if HELCO goes out, that seemed to be the case during Iselle, although they might have been down the first day or two, I don’t remember exactly how long. I was able to use my cell phone nearly the entire time HT was down.
In a normal power outage, landlines still work, but normally, so do cell phones if you have them charged.

[1voyager1]

quote:

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Originally posted by HereOnThePrimalEdge

Q2.
To have a phone even when the power goes out,

There are multiple scenarios.
During Iselle landlines in HPP were down for a month. They had to replace all of the wiring after the storm.
My cell phone worked, and I charged it from my car. The cell towers should have backup generators if HELCO goes out, that seemed to be the case during Iselle, although they might have been down the first day or two, I don’t remember exactly how long. I was able to use my cell phone nearly the entire time HT was down.
In a normal power outage, landlines still work, but normally, so do cell phones if you have them charged.

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With Spectrum, every time our power goes out for any reason we loose our phone because there is no power to the modem.

We do have cellphones.
But, for various reasons I do not like them.
I only use it when traveling and in emergencies.
Normally, I never give the number out for contact.


With Iselle, we lost power for 6 days, all showers were taken with a sun heated water bag.
We only lost power for 3 days from the Kona Wind that came through several months later.
By then, we has a generator for just in case, but still had to make daily runs for ice to keep the fridge and freezer cool.

[KeaauRich]

When I worked for Verizon on the mainland our fiber to the home service (FIOS) included a battery that kept basic phone service working for about 4 hours during a power outage (assuming, of course, that the problem wasn't a downed cable). The Hawaiian Tel offering does not include the backup battery in their regular package, but I'm pretty sure you can order it as an add-on for a higher fee. When we got our fiber service installed here, we figured our cell phone was an adequate backup during outages.

[leilanidude]

I used to have HT fiber to the house - pre-eruption. I have had Spectrum ever since because HT did not come in and fix the lines. I have a small battery backup system on the router which keeps it running for about 90 minutes during a power outage. I also have a couple of the security cameras (rated at 3 watts) also on their own batter backup. Spectrum has actually been good. Speed is about 100mb and is not choppy. I use a wired connection from router to work computer.

[HereOnThePrimalEdge]

With Spectrum, every time our power goes out for any reason we loose our phone because there is no power

With my copper HT landline I use a wall powered base station and battery powered cordless phones. Their range covers most of my property and the model I have allows me to block 250 different phone numbers. I keep an old style non-electric phone plugged into an extension for emergencies when the power is out. The copper wire provides the current for the ringer and push button dialing, so an old old style rotary phone isn’t necessary.

[1voyager1]

Learning a bit about HT's new fiber optics installation/offering in Leilani.
The offered i-net pricing will go up after one year.
Telephone will cost more than what we now pay Spectrum.
Not sure if HT was used by the previous owner, so not sure if copper wire now exists to the house.
There are several packages being offered.

It's looking like Telcom's "new deal" will be a fair amount more expensive than what we are now getting, not sure if we'll actually need 500Mbps, although it would be nice.
We have purposely cut our i-net/phone cost to be as low as we could get.
Not likely we'll jack up the cost for a speed we don't actually need.
Plus, it's likely Spectrum will up their speed in response to HT's competition here.

Gonna watch it for a while longer, see what shakes out with time.