Posts: 462
Threads: 25
Joined: Jun 2020
Hawaiian Telcom has extended their new fiber optic service into my section of HPP. They are offering significantly lower rates and faster internet than our current provider Spectrum. Frau Chunkster insists on a land line, so that would be part of the picture. I remember the bad old days of HT's frequent outages and lousy customer service when we had their service 12 years ago. Some of you in Puna Mauka have had their fiber optic several years now. How is the reliability, and what sort of price increases did they hit you with when the introductory offers ended? Thank you.
Posts: 789
Threads: 14
Joined: Oct 2013
Luckily the Internet service is awesome so you rarely if ever need to talk to them. They quadrupled the price, but then after calling to complain reduced to about 25% above what I was paying before.
Posts: 14,057
Threads: 424
Joined: Aug 2012
Downtime is a few minutes once-twice a year. Pricing for business class is "fixed", no need call and complain later.
The ONT includes an analog connector with regular dialtone for that "land line" experience. As an extra added bonus, the ONT consumes about 4W, cable modems burn around 10x that. So you can save money while you're saving money.
Posts: 156
Threads: 33
Joined: Dec 2014
01-31-2022, 10:48 PM
(This post was last modified: 01-31-2022, 10:48 PM by Gus.)
The reliability has been excellent. When my first contract ran out and the rate went up, they offered me another contract at reasonable rates. What absolutely sucks in my opinion is the phone service. They take away your POTS landline and replace it with their VOIP line. You have no choice. About 20% of my outgoing calls just don't work. I have a MagicJack phone just so I can call out reliably. Of course, when the internet or power goes out, so does the phone.
Posts: 8
Threads: 0
Joined: Dec 2021
Good to know, folks! We’ve had Spectrum for a while now and we had to up our service level to get any sort of decent download/upload speeds so we could stream. However, the SO isn’t fond of Hawaiian Telcom although the parental units swear by it.
Recent transplant to Puna from Valley Isle.
Posts: 462
Threads: 25
Joined: Jun 2020
Thanks for all the input, folks! I'd love to hear more, particularly as far as the phone service is concerned. The Frau is wedded to her land line almost as much as me, and we get free long distance with our Spectrum plan to almost everywhere, including Europe. So it needs to work consistently and get her free calls to Deutschland.
Posts: 4,155
Threads: 94
Joined: Mar 2014
I have Hawaiian Telcom 500x300 fiber to the house service. Using all CAT6 cabling and with gigabit enet adapters, it delivers what they say. Other than the errant Albizia tree falling over onto a line and knocking out service, it is rock solid. used to have Spectrum cable and it was mediocre.
Posts: 14,057
Threads: 424
Joined: Aug 2012
My favorite feature of fiber: it doesn't conduct electricity. Think "lightning strike" and "off-grid", it's a perfect fit.
Posts: 7,696
Threads: 681
Joined: Jun 2011
We've had it since the beginning. Worst part is the whack-a-mole with their pricing. After intro offer expires need to contact them to see what "new" intro offer is going to be. Speed is consistently close to what they advertise if your home network supports it.
We did have an outage that required a house call to fix. It left us without internet for two weeks.
We haven't had a land line in 10 years.
Posts: 4,820
Threads: 83
Joined: Feb 2009
I guess I live in a part of HPP with newer Spectrum infrastructure. We pay for 200 mb down and consistently get more that that.
400mb is available for $20.00/ month more.
We have had one outage where a truck delivering a D9 snagged the cable running over Makuu and ripped down about 1/4 mile of cable.
