Difference between Hawaiian Beaches and Hawaiian Shores

[terracore]

Originally Posted by Hilo Girl

J-Vick and 67cam I can't add much more to the description of the areas, since the other people in this forum are right on. I can give some advise about high speed internet, I am a real estate agent and I show a lot of people that will be working from home. I have clients that call internet providers while we are out looking at home to verify if the service is provided. You don't have to be in the home to get this verified, you can do it using the property address. Once you get on island you can do speed test as various home, once again something my clients to. Better yet, have the current home owners preform a speed test for you. If you advise them that a purchase is dependent on that, I am sure they will do it, I have yet to have one seller tell me no. Hope this helps.

I'm not sure what you mean by "get this verified" but let me elaborate on my experiences with Hawaiian telcom in Puna. If you call with an address and ask "can I get internet hooked up at xyz main street" you will hear typing and then they may say yes. Ok great. Put down a deposit and buy the house. After you sign the closing papers, call them back and ask when they can hook it up and suddenly its a different answer. They have areas where they offer broadband internet service but all their available internet ports were used up years ago, and they have no plans to fix this. The only way for most of their agents to make this determination is by initiating a work order to begin new service. That is somewhere deeper in their computer system, past the screens that show whether or not DSL service is "available" at that address. But don't worry, just because they have no internet service, they will be happy to sell you a landline so that you can use dial-up. If you can find a dial-up provider to call. Do they even exist anymore?

If you are buying a house that already has DSL broadband and the existing owner cancels their service (like everybody does when they move), somebody elsewhere looking for service gets that data port and even though the house you just bought had broadband DSL, it may never get it again. If the house you are buying currently has DSL you need to work a separate deal out with the owner so that their account gets changed to your name etc, otherwise if they cancel- no broadband for you.

Conversely, if you check to see if you can get the Home Fusion broadband service in Puna from the Verizon web site it will say its not available, but when you go to the Verizon store you'll find out that you can.

Reagan used to say, trust but verify. With Puna broadband it's more like verify, but don't trust.

Need to clarify- as far as I know this is an issue that only effects parts of Puna. I'm sure they have plenty of available ports around Hilo etc.

[mdand3boys]

Originally Posted by terracore

I'm not sure what you mean by "get this verified" but let me elaborate on my experiences with Hawaiian telcom in Puna. If you call with an address and ask "can I get internet hooked up at xyz main street" you will hear typing and then they may say yes. Ok great. Put down a deposit and buy the house. After you sign the closing papers, call them back and ask when they can hook it up and suddenly its a different answer. They have areas where they offer broadband internet service but all their available internet ports were used up years ago, and they have no plans to fix this. The only way for most of their agents to make this determination is by initiating a work order to begin new service. That is somewhere deeper in their computer system, past the screens that show whether or not DSL service is "available" at that address. But don't worry, just because they have no internet service, they will be happy to sell you a landline so that you can use dial-up. If you can find a dial-up provider to call. Do they even exist anymore?

If you are buying a house that already has DSL broadband and the existing owner cancels their service (like everybody does when they move), somebody elsewhere looking for service gets that data port and even though the house you just bought had broadband DSL, it may never get it again. If the house you are buying currently has DSL you need to work a separate deal out with the owner so that their account gets changed to your name etc, otherwise if they cancel- no broadband for you.

Conversely, if you check to see if you can get the Home Fusion broadband service in Puna from the Verizon web site it will say its not available, but when you go to the Verizon store you'll find out that you can.

Reagan used to say, trust but verify. With Puna broadband it's more like verify, but don't trust.

Need to clarify- as far as I know this is an issue that only effects parts of Puna. I'm sure they have plenty of available ports around Hilo etc.

Both Hawaiian Telcom and Oceanic Time Warner have a process for transferring an existing account to a new name. I have done it twice now with Hawaiian Telcom. It takes about 5 minutes and this guarantees that you will not lose the port to someone else.

Just make absolutely sure that your real estate agent knows this is important to you and that they make this known to the seller, first thing in the process. You do not want to lose that port and there really are people who call in every day to try and get the 1st available port. It can take months to get internet this way.