Tag Archives: Road Runner

DOCSIS 3.0 Road Runner in Hawaii?



Now that about a week has passed since we had our broadband scare here in Hawaii when a Fiber Cable between two islands was cut, it got me to thinking about all the things we are missing out in here in the land of Paradise.

We have no real competition to Road Runner, several ISP’s offer DSL but their is no high speed competition to Road Runner.
Verizon only has a Federal Business presence here, and does not to my knowledge have plans to offer FIOS here.
Clearwire is here with 4G, but its not much better than DSL for speed.

So the question I keep asking Oceanic Cable, the Time Warner / Road Runner affiliate is when do we get DOCSIS 3.0 and the long awaited upgrade in speed? I have been here in Hawaii now going on 14 years, and the cable service has only barely improved from the days when I first signed up for service. My understanding is that their is no plans to roll out DOCSIS 3.0 to the islands of Hawaii anytime soon while Time Warner in the lower 48 has been deploying it at a snails pace.

The potential answers to why they have been so slow in rolling out DOCSIS 3.0 is simple, no competition. There is no pressure from competitors to upgrade or improve the service. Another reason could be that they have not invested enough into the infrastructure over the past few years to support the upgrade and are simply dragging their feet because not enough people are demanding it.

I would gladly pay for more speed, but the increment increase has to be on both the download and upload speed. Like 10’s of thousands of other customers here in Hawaii, we better get used to waiting because I have a feeling DOCSIS 3.0 will be delivered on Unionized Hawaiian Time.


Hawaii Internet Slow Down could last a Month or More!



Late last night a Fiber Optic cable between two islands was cut here in Hawaii that is causing massive disruption for users of  Time Warner Road Runner Internet service.  Road Runner did not have in place any redundant back haul, and customers statewide were without Internet service for many hours. When the service did come back on-line it is throttled to speeds that rival dial up days as you can see by the speed test I ran.

A very informed GNC reader told me tonight that they are in mass panic, because they are going to be hard pressed to keep services online at a level of service that customers demand and it could be a month or more before the fiber is fixed and service is fully restored to a level that is considered acceptable. He recommended I call other providers immediately, as their is going to a run on other service providers to get connected to something that resembles something other than dial up speeds.

The first question I am asking is how come Oceanic / Road Runner did not have a backup plan. If a single fiber optic line being damaged was enough to bring down the states internet infrastructure there is some gross negligence by Road Runner management here in Hawaii in my opinion, and someone should be held to account for this lack of basic planning.

This should not come as a surprise because basic bandwidth speeds have not increased here significantly in many years. We have waited and waited for promised increased speeds and it has never happened. This incident makes it very obvious that they do not have the infrastructure in place to handle increased speeds. If one fiber cable is damaged resulting in this massive decrease in available service it is obvious that they have not been investing in infrastructure . This should be a wake up call to Oceanic.

Wait times to talk to customer service representatives were endless. While the cutting of a Fiber optic line is bad, they should have realized we live in Hawaii and our nearest neighbor is 2500 miles away.  This slow down is going to cost Hawaii business owners literally 100’s of thousands of dollars.

I encourage Hawaii Road Runner customers to keep the heat on Oceanic / Time Warner. I do not feel sorry for them, they should have considered this as a possibility before, and had the back haul in place to keep us connected at acceptable speeds.