TELECOMMUNICATION EFFORTS

    For many years the state has had a policy to diversify from tourism, encourage more trade, more electronic networks, and more connections with the outside world. One government project that ran from the late 1980's until 1995 was called Hawaii FYI. The goal was to encourage a homegrown information industry as well as to provide a network that would encourage grass roots participation in electronic discussions and the use of electronic mail. Every school and public library had a free public terminal or you could use your own computer, but popular acceptance was spotty, and as the Internet grew in importance, and Internet service providers began offering services in the islands, Hawaii FYI lost its funding and ceased operation.

Now Hawaii is a telecommunications hub for much of the Pacific Ocean. High-speed connections exist for Honolulu and for the island of Maui, but service options on the Big Island are mixed. Some businesses use frame relay, and in the Kona area, the high speed Roadrunner cable modem service is available to some residents, while others complain of the poor quality phone lines that limit Internet connections to lower speeds. The government, including the observatories in the mountains, and the University of Hawaii, have enormous bandwidth, while some of the rural MIRA users less than an hour from Hilo were lucky to have a 28.8-kilobit per second connection.