Internet reliability on big island (rent, houses, transfer)

[5yenem]

I am wondering how is the internet on the big island compared to the mainland? I am in the very early stages of thinking about a move to The big island. This would be a long term 5 year plan with a home purchase as the ultimate goal. Id like to start going down there once a year for a month at a time. However I require typical mainland high speed reliable internet to do my job. IS THAT CURRENTLY AVAILABLE?

[ar1ax]

Hi! I'm currently planning a move in August of 2016 to the Big Island, so although I don't live there, I've researched this. My understanding is that it varies from town to town & even street to street. That would be a good conversation to have with your landlord or residents in the town where you hope to live. Make sure you check out the amenities around (library, etc.) that would have internet. Good luck!

[5yenem]

Good tips, thank you.

[Due]

We are using Time Warner Cable. Their Turbo service has been as reliable and courteous as any internet service we've used on the mainland.
See below (your experience may vary):

Last Result:
Download Speed: 20052 kbps (2506.5 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 11986 kbps (1498.3 KB/sec transfer rate)
Latency: 15 ms
Jitter: 0 ms
‎2‎/‎12‎/‎2016‎ ‎9‎:‎28‎:‎28‎ ‎AM

[terracore]

When we bought our house Hawaii Telcom assured us DSL internet was available however when we tried to get it hooked up they said there weren't enough "ports" and all they could do is hook up voice service. The lesson here is there is a huge difference between internet is "available" and that they will actually provide service. The only way to know for sure is to call and start the service hookup call. You can call and ask if service is available at a particular address and they might say yes, then call back 5 minutes later and say you want service hooked up to that address and suddenly there aren't any ports, no waiting list, and you find yourself looking for cellular or satellite options.

If cable is available you're probably fine, it's DSL service that they hold hostage. And to the existing DSL users in those neighborhoods who scored one of the nearly mythical ports they are glad they aren't adding users to the already overloaded networks.

We did eventually get DSL service after 3+ years, an FCC broadband grant, and subsequent emails to their corporate office. Though I understand those additional ports are either gone or going fast. In the meantime we used Verizon home LTE service. It was fine, actually must faster than our DSL is, however it was 15X more expensive for 30 gigs than what we pay for unlimited.

Good luck and if you NEED good internet you'll probably want to limit your housing searches to places with cable. Last we checked Oceanic has no plans, not even long-term plans, to hook cable up to our neighborhood, even though the subdivision on the other side of the highway has it. 120 feet can make a huge difference.

[5yenem]

This is all very good to know as Puna is the area Im looking into. From what I understand this area is growing at a good clip at least by Hawaii standers. Do you think eventually some years down the line things will be more straight foreword and coverage more common?

[davephan]

Originally Posted by terracore

Last we checked Oceanic has no plans, not even long-term plans, to hook cable up to our neighborhood, even though the subdivision on the other side of the highway has it. 120 feet can make a huge difference.

It sounds like the old "Green Acres" TV show where there telephone line could only reach as far as the top of a telephone pole next to their house, and couldn't extend far enough to reach to their house! To use the telephone, they had to climb to the top of the telephone pole. Is there anyone you know that lives within a mile or two who can get cable Internet? Then you could share the cable Internet service, or maybe rent a virtual room at someone's home and install a second cable Internet service? You could then link that Internet connection with a long range point to point wireless connection. It's possible to extend a point to point wireless connection several miles. Extending an Internet connection with a long range wireless connection might seem a little extreme, but would be much more cost effective than attempting to use cellular Internet service.

[leilaniguy]

Email or call the association of some of the larger subdivisions, they should be able to tell you what options you have block by block.

[terracore]

Originally Posted by 5yenem

This is all very good to know as Puna is the area Im looking into. From what I understand this area is growing at a good clip at least by Hawaii standers. Do you think eventually some years down the line things will be more straight foreword and coverage more common?

The copper monopolies have no intention to improve rural service until population density reaches the point where they can turn a short-term profit. The only exception are those projects that are financed by FCC grants. In our case the FCC grant for our neighborhood supplied 500 ports with the FCC paying $800 per port. Mind you, there was pre-existing copper wiring for telephone and broadband service in our neighborhood, so the $400,000.00 only went to invisible network upgrades. (They used the word "fiber" but there is no fiber in our neighborhood, maybe they were referring to changes done along the highway) Max theoretical speed on our leg of this system is 7m/b down, 1m/b up. They offer speeds over 100x that fast in more urban areas.

What is more likely is improved wireless infrastructure, whether that will take the form of the upcoming 5G system or something else remains to be seen. There are a lot of low altitude satellite broadband projects in the planning/looking for capital stages- whether any of them will come to fruition will take over 5 years to find out.

There is a company called Aloha Broadband that uses the Oceanic cable backbone to provide wireless internet in some sections of some neighborhoods where the cable doesn't reach, however they do not appear to have offered any new service areas in the last few years.

The other thing to consider is that even if you score wired broadband of some sort, if your job is internet dependent, you will need a backup plan. After Iselle (as can happen also after much milder storms) people were without wired service for a long time. Your backup could be as simple as a wifi hotspot via your cell phone (moral of story, make sure you also have good cell service wherever you wind up- preferably with access to more than 1 tower) or not as simple like driving to wherever the internet is available so that you can continue to work. In the latter case, I remember after Iselle that people in lower HPP were stuck down there for days because albizias larger than houses were blocking the roads and it took a long time to chainsaw and bulldoze the access roads clear. They sent the national guard down on foot to check and see if everybody was ok, because the only forms of communication that were still operable were wireless. And for a short time, that did not include cell phones.