Wild, Wild Wireless

Jacy Youn

In this case, however, more doesn't necessarily mean better. With so many different companies transmitting overlapping wireless signals, Waikiki's airspace is becoming as crowded as the surf below. "It's kinda like the wireless wild, wild west. There are a lot of different players out there right now, and the more carriers there are, the more blockage of signals we encounter," says Josh Beil, vice president of business development for Skywave Broadband, which transmits wireless connections from three rooftop locations to users at the Ewa end of Waikiki.

Airwave interference can result in slower (and sometimes even dropped) connections, which bode well for neither the ISPs nor the end user. "It's an expected problem when you have multiple networks competing for airspace in the same, very dense geographic location," says Beil. "The question is how to solve it."

Illustration: Mike Austin

Honolulu County Director of Information Technology Gordon Bruce says the city is working on a possible solution. Although only in the concept stage, the city's plan calls for a nonprofit consortium of ISPs, whose members would bid on wireless contracts for whole geographic areas (Waikiki, for example) for a period of time. "The consortium would be responsible for administering the provisioning of wireless services in a competitive manner throughout Honolulu," explains Bruce, who says the government would do little more than provide facilities on which carriers could install their antennas. "It would also be responsible for billing. So a user pays the consortium one fee for service wherever wireless is available, not just in Waikiki. Because right now, users pay each time they sign up with a different provider."

Bruce imagines it'll take about a year to put the consortium together and, in the meantime, ISPs are doing what they can to claim their stakes in Waikiki. A few companies (including Hurricane Internet, whose 14 rooftop antennas provide coverage to roughly 70 percent of Waikiki) are aggressively pushing wired solutions to Waikiki hotels to supplement wireless revenue streams. "When we started offering wireless 31/2 years ago, we were the only solution in Waikiki because not all of the hotels had Internet," says Hurricane Internet Vice President Kalani Miller. "Now, with more wireless providers and more hotels getting Internet access, we'll probably see less [traffic] on our wireless network. But if we continue to get hotels to use our wired solutions, then we're still in the game."