Aloha Neighbors,
Below is an article from the website 'Hawaii Broadband Map' (Link at bottom of article)
Friends of Puna's Future, Puna's advocate for community-
is seeking to use the information provided by participating in the High Speed Internet Speed Test
to create a map indicating the lack of services in rural Puna.
Please, won't you check out the article below and click on the link at the bottom of the page to participate in the speed test?
Even if you are one of the firtunate few who enjoy Oceanic Warner in Fern Acres,
please support the rest of your neighbors by participating!
They are also interested in knowing about any 'end runs' -Where you may have
figured out a way to get high speed internet at home through another provider/device.
If so, please tell all!
Thanks so much for your time!
Senator Daniel K. Inouye
In 2010, the State of Hawaii's Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs (DCCA) was awarded a grant to assist the State in gathering and verifying data on the availability, speed, location, and technology type of broadband services. The data collected and compiled will also be used to develop publicly available state-wide broadband maps and to inform the comprehensive, interactive, and searchable broadband map. Consumers in the State of Hawaii can access the interactive online map to identify the availability, speed and location of broadband services in the State of Hawaii. In addition, consumers can help improve the data by testing their broadband connection. To facilitate the Hawaii Broadband Map Initiative, DCCA has teamed with University of Hawaii’s Pacific Disaster Center.
January 13, 2010
The Hawaii Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs will use a $1.9 million federal grant to map broadband availability in the state.
The department and the federal Department of Commerce's National Telecommunications and Information Administration announced the grant Tuesday. The purpose of the grant program is to "increase broadband access and adoption" across the country; the state department is working with the University of Hawaii Pacific Disaster Center, which will complete the mapping project.
Exactly how that will take place is still being determined, department spokeswoman Christine Hirasa said Tuesday.
Director Larry Reifurth, in a statement, said he hopes the mapping will help Hawaii's broadband users.
"We hope that the broadband map will encourage increased competition between broadband service providers by giving them additional information regarding communities within the state that would benefit from the availability of new broadband services," he said.
About $1.4 million of the grant will be used for the mapping project, which should take two years. The remaining $500,000 will be used for broadband planning activities over a five-year period.
Comparisons of broadband speeds rank Hawaii among the slowest in the nation. Speed Matters, a project of the Communications Workers of America, ranking Hawaii 47th in the country in 2009, up from 48th in 2008.
Nate Smith, president of Oceanic Time Warner, a major broadband provider, called those test results misleading, in part because the testing takes place on the mainland. A simplified explanation, he said, is that when testers on the mainland select a Hawaii server, information from that server must pass through more "gates" and the speed of the information transfer is limited by those gates.
Oceanic Time Warner has not released its own tests to dispute the national rankings, he said.
"The test would be to pay for whoever wrote that article to experience it here," then compare with similar tests at places that ranked higher, Smith said.
Oceanic Time Warner is working to double the speed of the standard Roadrunner package, he said. He expected that to be introduced starting some time this year.
The broadband rankings are available at speedmatters.org. Another speed testing site is available at speedtest.net.
http://www.hibroadbandmap.org/