Hawaiian Telcom

[craigwatanabe]

Re: Hawaiian Telcom

Hawaiian Telcom has backup generators at their Central offices which provide backup power in the event of a power outage. The cable headends have backup power. But the individual neighborhood nodes do not have backup power. If Oceanic wants to provide genuine carrier grade service, each node would have to have backup power.

Aaron, some of these nodes are located in closets of people's homes too. My brother in law works for Oceanic as a fiber installer in Honolulu and he has a home in Ewa Beach. Oceanic pays him $500 per month rent to house a node in a closet in one of his bedrooms. I'm not sure if part of that rent is used to offset electrical useage to power the node.

Hawaian Telecom on the other hand has central offices that are typically housed in large unmarked concrete (sometimes wood) buildings throughout neighborhoods. They're easy to find as they look so out of place with a crapload of phone lines running in and out of it.

[GeckoGeek]

Re: Hawaiian Telcom

Aaron, some of these nodes are located in closets of people's homes too. My brother in law works for Oceanic as a fiber installer in Honolulu and he has a home in Ewa Beach. Oceanic pays him $500 per month rent to house a node in a closet in one of his bedrooms.

Interesting! I aways thought the phone company had a better infrastructure for the future then cable, just as soon as they take care of the copper to the home. Thanks for confirming that.

[craigwatanabe]

Re: Hawaiian Telcom

Gee my sister in law writes a scathing letter to Walter Dodds about how Hawaiian Telecom's CEO did such a crappy job and look what happens Ya know Dodds is one of the chief investors of Hawaiian Telecom right?

[MixedPlateBroker]

Re: Hawaiian Telcom

Props! It never ceases to amaze me how many incompetent fools find their way into upper management. Out those crusty batards!

[Beachboy]

Hawaiian Telcomm Nightmares..

Since the Carlyle Group bought out Verizon here in the islands, it has been second rate at best. Long distance calls are terrible. The connections resemble the kind you'd get in the 80's....plenty of crackling sounds in the background. The very sounds one would hear in a fireplace! But that is not why I've started this thread.
It has come to my attention that several people have had some real nightmares with Hawaiian Tel Comm. So here is my nightmare to add to the pile.
Over here ,on the Big Island we pay more for just about everything. But this is crazy. Through Hawaiian tel Comm our monthly bill was around $39.00 a month after their three month intro rate of $9.99 for DSL, it went up to the $39.00 a month rate . But our current bill jumped up to over $300.00 Why? They never billed us for the landline/phone service for seven months. Then the realized their mistake, and now they billing us for their mistakes that goes back seven months! I might also add that the first phone number they(HTC) gave us a phone number that belonged to some other business!!! So for three months I got phones calls for some nursery in Hilo, and was billed for that service too! Is this messed up or what? Should I have to pay back the owed money in one lump sum as they want it? Or should I be able to set the terms of the payback since they messed up?

[tutusue]

Re: Hawaiian Telcomm Nightmares..

Hawaiian Telcom's billing has been a mess since Carlyle took over. I'm still trying to straighten out a phone # I cancelled mid last year. It took me a year to straighten out another number. And, yet another number that I had the service changed to a much less costly service, continued deducting my checking account for the higher amount (over 12 times higher) for about 4 months. Finally, after many complaints and promises that the problem was fixed, a customer service rep suggested I stop automatic payment altogether and not sign up for it again until after the mess was straightened out. That took a few more months. I felt like I had a 2nd full time job trying to get this mess under control. Each time I spoke with customer service I logged the date, time, name and brief notes. Each time I had to call back to complain once again, I read that information to the latest CS rep. Each rep promised s/he fixed the problem. The following month the bills didn't reflect the fix. I'd call again, each time being told that there was either no notes on my account from the previous CS rep or that the previous CS rep had submitted the change inaccurately. Talk about frustration!

To answer your question...yes, you will have to retroactively pay for charges for services even tho' it was HT's billing error. Have you contacted them to see if you can work out a payment plan?

The number for the nursery in Hilo might've been a business number which costs more than a residential number. Ask HT to check into that, too.

Must admit I haven't had the same experience as you regarding long distance calls. I am, however, not happy with their cell service.

[craigwatanabe]

Re: Hawaiian Telcomm Nightmares..

You think that's bad...when my wife moved her office from one room to another room in the same building, she had to get her DSL line transferred as well.

A Hawaiian Telecom technician came out and ran the new office lines (three of them) to the punch block and I came in and wired their entire office. The phones worked fine but in order for my wife to get their DSL service up, Hawaiian Telecom had to reprogram the CO to communicate with her DSL modem since the twisted pair was different than the one dedicated to her old office.

Hawaiian Telecom told her it would take a week to get their DSL line back up and running. Well four weeks later my wife still has no DSL service to connect to PATCH's servers on Oahu thru a VPN. So I run a physical telephone line from her old office to her new office just so they can get their internet service up and running.

Oh by the way Hawaiian Telecom was charging my wife for DSL service the whole time she was without it in her new office because the existing service was still running in the old office despite no DSL modem hooked up and running on it.

Hawaiian Telecom sucks big time. I hope this new restructuring guru they hired fixes all the f*ck ups that the current management team made.

[kani-lehua]

Re: Hawaiian Telcom

now, can we just get rid of ALL the darn phone books?

[Honoruru]

Re: Hawaiian Telcom

now, can we just get rid of ALL the darn phone books?

I agree! It used to be that telephone books were useful for getting connected. Now, these weighty monstrosities are only useful as doorstops (very heavy doorstops) or, as we did at our office recently, to use as a backing for a ramp so that we could roll off a multi-function printer/copier. Using the internet to find phone numbers/companies is easier, and much more eco-friendly.

[kani-lehua]

Re: Hawaiian Telcom

some people don't have internet access so they should call the phone company and ask to have one (1) delivered.

honoruru: knew someone that made a christmas tree with the enormous tome! lol.

[craigwatanabe]

Re: Hawaiian Telcom

I wished Hawaiian Telecom would start publishing the directory mainly on the internet or at least a CD as an option to the paper directory. Heck you could even download it onto your smart phone and really have a contact list. With today's 8Gb SD cards available, you could probably put an entire directory on one SD card.

[tutusue]

Re: Hawaiian Telcom

[...]Now, these weighty monstrosities are only useful as doorstops (very heavy doorstops) or, as we did at our office recently, to use as a backing for a ramp so that we could roll off a multi-function printer/copier.[...]

And don't forget they come in handy for post-highchair toddlers seated at the dining room table!

[kani-lehua]

Re: Hawaiian Telcom

I wished Hawaiian Telecom would start publishing the directory mainly on the internet or at least a CD as an option to the paper directory. Heck you could even download it onto your smart phone and really have a contact list. With today's 8Gb SD cards available, you could probably put an entire directory on one SD card.

brilliant idea!!!!

[tutusue]

Re: Hawaiian Telcom

I'm remembering a CD or DVD a few years back. Can't remember the company but it was the Yellow Pages, iirc. Maybe it was the Paradise Yellow Pages? They left a bunch of disks with me which I left out for people to take. I never used it but I sure would now.

[Konaguy]

Re: Hawaiian Telcom

I think Carlyle seriously underestimated the magnitude of migrating 80 backoffice systems from the mainland back to Hawaii. They gave Bearing Point a year to do the systems integration. Now you can see the results of that poor decision via huge financial losses and a bad public image.

But there has been some bright spots. They've invested in building the infrastructure to offer up to 11Mbps/1Mbps speeds here. If Verizon still owned Hawaiian Telcom, it would be unlikely that we'd be seeing those speeds. Hell would have to freeze over if we were to get FiOS.