Hawaiian Telcom is enabling more than 1,000 rural locations throughout Hawai‘i with fiber broadband this year. With Cyber Monday forecast to be the largest online shopping day in U.S. history, it’s clear that broadband has become a necessity to modern life. Broadband access in rural areas fuels economic development, enabling residents to purchase goods that are not available locally while broadening business, healthcare and educational opportunities.

Partially supported by the federal Connect America Fund (CAF), broadband is now available in parts of these communities: Ainaloa, Kurtistown, Mountain View and the Kona Airport on Hawai‘i Island as well as Princeville on Kaua‘i. CAF is the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) program to expand access to broadband services in rural areas that are unserved or underserved.

Hawai‘i’s Technology Leader is also the only Hawai‘i-based service provider that submitted and won a competitive bid for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) CAF Phase II Auction held this summer. Hawaiian Telcom was awarded $18.2 million in CAF Phase II Auction funds to deploy High-Speed Internet service of 1 gigabit per second (Gbps) download and 500 megabits per second (Mbps) upload to approximately 4,000 unserved rural locations statewide over the next six years.