Business Briefs

Waikiki Beach Wi-Fi boasts top-10 speed

At 1.6 mbps the Wi-Fi offered on Waikiki Beach is among the fastest at the nation’s top beaches, according to recent data.

Wefi, a company specializing in mobile intelligence and network analytics, found one of Hawaii’s most famous beaches to have the seventh-best Wi-Fi speed in the U.S., behind No. 1 Clearwater Beach (2.9 mbps) and others in Florida, New Jersey, Cali­for­nia, and South Caro­lina.

"The data was not broken out between free and paid Wi-Fi," said David Fishman, wefi chief marketing officer. "If the user had a password and was able to get connected, it was used as a marker for the speed; all of this data was averaged together to generate the final insights."

ShakaNet has provided free Wi-Fi in Waikiki since 2006 as part of its Wireless Waikiki initiative.

The wefi study of some 45 million Wi-Fi hot spots conducted between April 1 and June 15 also rated hotels and airports. Red Roof Inns were found to have the fastest Wi-Fi connectivity among hotels at 4.34 mbps, and Detroit Metropolitan Airport topped the airports rankings with 4.63 mbps.

Honolulu Airport was not among the top 12 cited by the company.

Toyota pursues hydrogen fuel cell power

TOKYO » Rocket science long dismissed as too impractical and expensive for everyday cars is getting a push into the mainstream by Toyota, the world’s top-selling automaker.

Buoyed by its success with electric-gasoline hybrid vehicles, Toyota is betting that drivers will embrace hydrogen fuel cells, an even cleaner technology that runs on the energy created by an electrochemical reaction when oxygen in the air combines with hydrogen stored as fuel.

Unlike internal combustion engines, which power most vehicles on roads today, a pure hydrogen fuel cell emits no exhaust, only some heat and a trickle of pure water.

U.S. home construction fell 9.3% in June

WASHINGTON » U.S. home construction fell in June to the slowest pace in nine months, a setback to hopes that housing is regaining momentum and will boost economic growth this year. Construction fell 9.3 percent last month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 893,000 homes, the Commerce Department said Thursday. That was the slowest pace since September and followed a 7.3 percent drop in May, a decline even worse than initially reported.

Applications for building permits, considered a good indicator of future activity, were also down in June, dropping 4.2 percent to a rate of 963,000 after a 5.1 percent decline in May. The worse-than-expected June performance reflected a big drop in activity in the South, where construction plunged by 29.6 percent last month.

Airbus scores $75 billion in orders at show

FARNBOROUGH, England » Airbus beat rival Boeing in the aircraft order stakes at this year’s Farnborough International Airshow, getting nearly twice as many orders and commitments.

Airbus said Thursday its orders and commitments at Farnborough for 496 aircraft were valued at $75 billion. Demand for its A320neo, or "new engine option," was particularly strong. Boeing, meanwhile, secured business worth $40.2 billion for 201 airplanes.

On The Move

» HiHR has appointed Trisha Nomura vice president of strategic services. She has 13 years of experience in financial management, professional services and operations and was previously one of the founding partners at PKF Pacific Hawaii. Nomura also worked as an auditor at PricewaterhouseCoopers, director of accounting at Young Brothers and operations manager at Grant Thornton.

» HawaiiUSA Federal Credit Union has appointed Steven Shi­mazu, a business loan portfolio management officer, to the credit union. He has 16 years of small-business and SBA lending experience and was previously serving as vice president and business underwriting manager for American Savings Bank. Shi­mazu has also worked at Bank of Rhode Island, Sovereign Bank in Pennsylvania and Bank of America in Cali­for­nia.

Ship Ahoy!

Today’s ship arrivals and departures: