Internet Service Options in the Honoka'a Area

Aloha!

Remember the bad old days of Internet service when you plugged your computer into the phone jack and dialed up? You heard a god-awful screeching noise and then found yourself magically connected, able to surf the web and download email. One downside was having your phone line tied up. Another, once you knew better (after having surfed on broadband at the office), was how incredibly slow dial-up is.

In the Honoka'a area, to the best of my knowledge, you can avoid dial-up and choose one of these four broadband (high speed) Internet services at your home: DSL, cable, satellite, or cellular wireless. In this article, I’ll briefly explain the difference between these four options.

First, DSL. This service is provided by Hawaiian Telcom. DSL is an abbreviation for Digital Subscriber Line. Essentially, it’s a digital signal transmitted over the POTS (plain old telephone system) landline to your home. Yep, the same line that your analog phone employs can also carry digital signals. When you sign up for DSL, you are provided a modem, which includes one port to connect to the phone jack on the wall, and another that plugs into your computer’s network port. The modem is your bridge to the Internet.

Cable Internet is locally provided by Oceanic Time Warner. The Internet feed is via coaxial cable, the same type of cable that plugs into your set-top cable TV receiver. So you run coax from a working cable port on a wall to a modem provided by Time Warner, then plug the modem into your computer’s network port.

When comparing cable vs. DSL it’s all about the total package, because DSL is typically bundled with your phone service, as is cable now. Thing is, cable includes Internet, phone and TV service. So you’ve got to do the math, factoring in satellite TV’s cost and programming options if you want to consider TV, DSL Internet and phone service.

Hughesnet offers broadband satellite Internet service to customers who aren’t serviced by DSL or cable. This requires mounting a satellite dish on the roof. Cable from the dish connects to a modem, and the modem plugs into your PC’s network port. Satellite Internet is not as speedy as DSL, as there is latency in transmission from your modem to the satellite (26,000 miles in space!) to the ground station and back again. But it’s still faster than dial-up, and there are several speeds available, depending on your budget and thirst for fast web surfing.

The last service to mention is a type of wireless provided by cell phone companies. (This is not the same as WI-FI, which you can access with your laptop in a hotel, restaurant or airport.) After signing up for cellular Internet service, you are provided with a modem card that plugs into your laptop. The modem picks up a cell signal and gives access to the Internet via the cell system that your phone works on. This is typically the slowest of the four broadband services explained in this article, but it’s still faster than dial-up!

I hope I’ve given a frame of reference so you can understand what broadband Internet means (vs. dial-up) and what’s locally available.

Wishing you akamai computing!