Broadband Coming To More Hawaiian Homes Via Surge In Federal Funding

The state Department of Hawaiian Home Lands has received a $72 million federal “Internet for All” grant to deliver broadband access to thousands of homesteaders with slow or no internet service and provide job training to DHHL lessees.

The new grant brings the total Hawaiian Homes broadband funding via the National Telecommunications and Information Administration to $89 million.

“This new federal funding will mean communities on Hawaiian homelands will have better, more reliable high-speed internet at home, helping more people access education, health care, and employment resources online,” said U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz in a written statement. The Hawaii Democrat is chairman of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs.

At a press conference Tuesday, DHHL Broadband Coordinator Jaren Tengan said the money will be used to deliver faster internet connections to DHHL lands on Molokai, Maui, Big Island, Kauai and Oahu.

It will upgrade service to existing lots with substandard, and also finance broadband connections to new housing developments. Grant funds will be distributed over a four-year period.

The grants will help rural homesteads that lost service in June when telecommunications provider Sandwich Isles Communications abruptly laid off its employees and terminated service on Hawaiian Home lands.

That left at least 100 homesteads and businesses across the state on the wrong side of the digital divide, particularly on Molokai. Tengan said the federal grant “helps us increase competition, so we are able to avoid a situation like Sandwich Isles again.”

Sandwich Isles had an agreement with DHHL to provide service to homesteaders, including those who were unable to hook up to any other telecommunications companies because their lots are in isolated areas.

Lt. Gov. Sylvia Luke, who is leading the Green administration’s high-speed internet initiative known as Connect Kākou, said “connectivity and reliable internet is not just something that is nice to have, but it’s a necessity.”

Connectivity is needed to work from home and for online learning, and “in rural communities even health care access depends on reliable internet,” she said.

The latest NTIA funding is part of a surge in federal broadband funding already committed to Hawaii for a variety of projects. The money is being provided under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021, which included $65 billion for broadband initiatives across the country.

The other funding earmarked for Hawaii include $115 million in U.S. Treasury Capital Projects Funding, some of which is being used to partially fund installation of new fiber lines between the islands.

The state picked Georgia-based Ocean Networks Inc. to develop that project, which is also a public-private partnership that seeks to create a new player in the Hawaii telecom market. The state plans to retain partial ownership of the new Ocean Networks system.

That system is supposed to be completed by 2026, and will be called the Hawaiian Islands Fiber Link. The undersea segment of the project is expected to total more than 408 miles.

Another $149 million is also in the works in Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment funding from NTIA to upgrade service across the state. The first priority for that money is to deliver service to an estimated 12,700 homes that lack adequate broadband service today.

The state is expected to distribute much of that BEAD funding to existing internet providers such as Charter Communications or Hawaiian Telcom, which will then install fiber optic cabling to properties that now have substandard service.

Hawaiian Telcom was also awarded a separate, competitive $37 million federal broadband grant from NTIA last year. The utility plans to use that money and another $50 million in private funding and in-kind contributions to lay both undersea and land-based fiber.

Those new fiber lines will provide redundancy to make the islands’ networks more reliable, and will also reach into areas currently without service.

Civil Beat’s coverage of Native Hawaiian issues and initiatives is supported by a grant from the Abigail Kawananakoa Foundation.