Faster Broadband from Hawaiian Telcom

[Quark]

Re: Faster Broadband from Hawaiian Telcom

Wow. Did they sign up for that speed? Or maybe HT is doing the "sneaky sale". Give the customer full speed for a week or so and then say "oops - sorry, we have to cut you back to what you paid for" and see if the customer suddenly decides to upgrade.

That's a good idea, maybe I'll suggest it as a sales strategy. BTW, speaking of sales strategies, Peter Kay just posted a blog entry to his site: www.ycm.com announcing Oceanic's free, double your upload speed. I am curious to find out how Oceanic did this performance upgrade. Since you need to reboot your cable modem it might be a firmware upgrade to a new compression technology.

Any thoughts on this?

[Konaguy]

Re: Faster Broadband from Hawaiian Telcom

TW, speaking of sales strategies, Peter Kay just posted a blog entry to his site: www.ycm.com announcing Oceanic's free, double your upload speed. I am curious to find out how Oceanic did this performance upgrade. Since you need to reboot your cable modem it might be a firmware upgrade to a new compression technology.

Any thoughts on this?

I'm guessing since I haven't heard anything that its a firmware abnormality.Standard RR service here is 5Mbps/384K. Road Runner Turbo is 8Mbps/512K (which I suspect Mr. Kay has).

[GeckoGeek]

Re: Faster Broadband from Hawaiian Telcom

That's a good idea, maybe I'll suggest it as a sales strategy.

Just send some good stuff my way if they do it!

The thing I notice about people is they don't really notice a speed up that much unless it's really dramatic. But they sure notice a slow down once they are used to the faster speed.

I am curious to find out how Oceanic did this performance upgrade.

I'm guessing they simply changed the settings in their cable management system. (Perhaps they are using more channels for upload now.) Rebooting the modem gets the updated setting.

[Quark]

Re: Faster Broadband from Hawaiian Telcom

I'm guessing they simply changed the settings in their cable management system. (Perhaps they are using more channels for upload now.) Rebooting the modem gets the updated setting.

I think you are right. I did a speed test with Speakeasy.net and I got about 935Kbps upload speed. Speakeasy would measure bits traversing to your PC and wouldn't care if there was compression or not. So it would be a reflection of line speed on the cable system. I don't know for sure but that sounds logical.

[Konaguy]

Re: Faster Broadband from Hawaiian Telcom

I got confirmation from another RR subscriber here on the Big Island that they've upgraded the upload speeds.

click START to re-test
Server process not running: start web100srv process on remote server (lrrr.uhnet.net:3001)

click START to re-test
Connected to: lrrr.uhnet.net -- Using IPv4 address
Checking for Middleboxes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Done
checking for firewalls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Done
running 10s outbound test (client-to-server [C2S]) . . . . . 979.0kb/s
running 10s inbound test (server-to-client [S2C]) . . . . . . 7.85Mb/s
Your PC is connected to a Cable/DSL modem
[S2C]: Packet queuing detected

Apparently this is free upgrade for all subscribers.To get the upgrade you need to reboot your modem.

[pzarquon]

Re: Faster Broadband from Hawaiian Telcom

Once again, thanks, Aaron, for dissecting all this for us.

So. RoadRunner has offered "up to" 7MB down, and is now giving everyone "up to" 1MB up as well. No charge for the boost. HiTel has been crowing about offering 7MB and 11MB down and up to 1MB up, but you gotta pay for it, and not everyone can get it anyway.

Methinks HiTel needs to step it up again.

Er... Is it just my imagination, or is the big giant ad on Hawaiian Telcom's homepage promoting their new fast internet broken? If you click the little button, you get the information, but click anywhere else, and you just get, "This is missing." Fine salesmanship there!

[Konaguy]

Re: Faster Broadband from Hawaiian Telcom

Once again, thanks, Aaron, for dissecting all this for us.

So. RoadRunner has offered "up to" 7MB down, and is now giving everyone "up to" 1MB up as well. No charge for the boost. HiTel has been crowing about offering 7MB and 11MB down and up to 1MB up, but you gotta pay for it, and not everyone can get it anyway.

Methinks HiTel needs to step it up again.

Er... Is it just my imagination, or is the big giant ad on Hawaiian Telcom's homepage promoting their new fast internet broken? If you click the little button, you get the information, but click anywhere else, and you just get, "This is missing." Fine salesmanship there!

Actually currently standard Road Runner service is 5Mbps/384K for 44.95.Now that will be 5Mbps/1Mbps for 44.95. To get 8Mbps/1Mbps is additional 9.95 a month. Come Monday Oceanic should be making a big announcement about a higher speed increase.

When that gets released you'll see that HawTel is very competitive with Oceanic.

[Konaguy]

Re: Faster Broadband from Hawaiian Telcom

Methinks HiTel needs to step it up again.

You can look at that way. But I was reading a comment in another forum. There was this Road Runner subscriber griping that there should be a free download speed upgrade also. She didn't like the fact that it will cost 24.95 more for 15Mbps service.

[Brad White]

Re: Faster Broadband from Hawaiian Telcom

That's a good idea, maybe I'll suggest it as a sales strategy. BTW, speaking of sales strategies, Peter Kay just posted a blog entry to his site: www.ycm.com announcing Oceanic's free, double your upload speed. I am curious to find out how Oceanic did this performance upgrade. Since you need to reboot your cable modem it might be a firmware upgrade to a new compression technology.

Any thoughts on this?

I tried it and it works... I went from 355 to 928... wow

[Konaguy]

Re: Faster Broadband from Hawaiian Telcom

Here is the link to the Honolulu Advertiser article that mentions the higher Road Runner speeds. Apparently its currently only available in Kaimuki ?
http://www.honoluluadvertiser.com/ap...710010332/1071

Also I updated my Big Island-centric Internet access option FAQ.

Currently there are these Internet providers
Pacific LightNet
www.plni.net
www.aloha.net 334-4000
Seismic Internet www.seismicinternet.com
Hawaiian Telcom http://hawaiiantel.com/ 643-3456
Oceanic Time Warner Cable
www.oceanic.com
www.hawaii.rr.com 643-2337
LavaNet www.lava.net
Flex www.flex.com

PLNI offers dialup,wireless,DSL
Seismic offers dialup,DSL
Hawaiian Telcom offers DSL, Dialup
Oceanic Time Warner offers cable modem service. Alternately you can get
Earthlink Cable Modem Service www.earthlink.net
LavaNet offers DSL,dialup
Flex Dialup DSL

Oceanic Time Warner Road Runner is 44.95 a month (Less if you bundle it with
other services). Earthlink Cable Modem Service is 41.95 a month.
It is 5Mbps/1Mbps service (There is Road Runner Turbo 8Mbps/1Mbps for an additional 9.95 a month or 24.95 for 15Mbps/1Mbps service).

Hawaiian Telcom offers 1.5Mbps/384K service for 37.99 month to month/29.99
w/ one year contract. 3Mbps/768K DSL is available for 37.99 month to month/
29.99 with a year contract.

Dry DSL is available.

3Mbps/768K is 34.99 a month.
7Mbps/1Mbps 44.99 a month
11Mbps/11Mbps 54.99 a month

39.99 for 7Mbps service (with landline)
49.99 for 11Mbps service (with landline)

69.99 for Mychoice bundle (with 7Mbps service)
79.99 for Mychoice bundle (with 11Mbps service)

If you can get digital cable service through Oceanic, odds are good that you
can get Road Runner. It is available in most areas of the island, including
Puna,Ka'u,Kona,Hamakua,Hilo.

(Special exception for North Kohala)
Oceanic Cable offers WAVE instead of Road Runner.
There is two flavors of WAVE.

24.95 with cable, (29.95 without cable) for 384K/384K service
44.95 for 3Mbps/384K service.

If I can't make more complicated, Wireless is available too
http://www.aloha.net/wireless/
http://www.alohabroadband.com/
http://www.coconut-wireless.net/
http://www.hibroad.com/
http://www.fastnethi.com/
http://www.awshi.com/index.asp

[mel]

Re: Faster Broadband from Hawaiian Telcom

I haven't read every post in the this thread, so sorry if I may be repeating something here. About 2 weeks ago I picked up a free demo kit from Hawaiian Telcom and never plugged the modem in until tonight.

The modem works fine, but i am still connected to my present provider at the present speed.

Being a Mac guy I found out the enclosed CD is totally useless, and they tell you before you open the thing to simply go to the following domain.

http://mac.hawaiiantel.net/

I go there and am greeted with a registration / verification screen asking for my phone number and last name. So I type that stuff in and I get looped back to the screen. Typed it in a few more times and never got beyond the screen.

So now I am about to give up, pack the modem back in the box, put the contents back in the Hawaiian Telcom bag and give it all back to them. Lucky it is a "free" 30-day trial and hopefully I won't get billed for any of this stuff.

Did I wait too long from the time I picked up the modem (Sept. 15) to connect to the service? The pretty young lady at the new Hawaiian Telcom Phone Mart apparently gave me all the info and stuff I needed, so I can't understand why I can't get past first base.

[GeckoGeek]

Re: Faster Broadband from Hawaiian Telcom

Being a Mac guy I found out the enclosed CD is totally useless,

Being a PC guy, I can tell you that you ain't missing anything.

As for that website, that's just to set up things like email, web hosting, etc. If all you want is internet access, just go.

[GeckoGeek]

Re: Faster Broadband from Hawaiian Telcom

Here is the link to the Honolulu Advertiser article that mentions the higher Road Runner speeds. http://www.honoluluadvertiser.com/ap...710010332/1071

I think the table at the end of the article is misleading. RR isn't $30 except for the first year. Fooy on that.

[Konaguy]

Re: Faster Broadband from Hawaiian Telcom

I think the table at the end of the article is misleading. RR isn't $30 except for the first year. Fooy on that.

Yeah I noticed the same thing. Also you need to have Standard cable service to (44.00) to get that rate.

[Konaguy]

Re: Faster Broadband from Hawaiian Telcom

I haven't read every post in the this thread, so sorry if I may be repeating something here. About 2 weeks ago I picked up a free demo kit from Hawaiian Telcom and never plugged the modem in until tonight.

The modem works fine, but i am still connected to my present provider at the present speed.

Being a Mac guy I found out the enclosed CD is totally useless, and they tell you before you open the thing to simply go to the following domain.

http://mac.hawaiiantel.net/

I go there and am greeted with a registration / verification screen asking for my phone number and last name. So I type that stuff in and I get looped back to the screen. Typed it in a few more times and never got beyond the screen.

So now I am about to give up, pack the modem back in the box, put the contents back in the Hawaiian Telcom bag and give it all back to them. Lucky it is a "free" 30-day trial and hopefully I won't get billed for any of this stuff.

Did I wait too long from the time I picked up the modem (Sept. 15) to connect to the service? The pretty young lady at the new Hawaiian Telcom Phone Mart apparently gave me all the info and stuff I needed, so I can't understand why I can't get past first base.

Ok lets see what we can do here ? Please post some speed test results from
http://www.speedtest.net/

Do you have any internet connectivity ? Your connection is going through HawTel, not LavaNet.

I wouldn't give up so easily. If you want I can have someone call you or you can call up HT tech support.