Weather disrupts service, keeping HawTel line busy

Question: The Date Street-Kapiolani Boulevard area, including the Regency Tower condominium, has been without telephone service since the week of Oct. 20. The problem and service might not be resolved until after Wednesday. It has been impossible to speak to a service representative at Hawaiian Telcom. What is the problem, and why has there not been public notification by Hawaiian Telcom about the problem and its resolution? There should be news reports on this matter so the public and businesses know they cannot reach us by phone, especially landline users without cellphones.

Answer: Although some customers have had their service already restored, the target date still is Wednesday to restore all service, Hawaiian Telcom spokeswoman Ann Nishida Fry said Thursday.

"If that date changes, we will contact all customers who still have open (service) tickets and left an alternate number or email address with us," she said.

Although the service disruption occurred during the time Tropical Storm Ana was threatening the islands, the storm did not cause widespread outages to Hawaiian Telcom’s state-wide communications network.

However, the prolonged rain and humidity caused a higher volume of individual service problems throughout the state, including the Date Street-Kapiolani Boulevard area, Nishida Fry said. "Prolonged wet weather can trigger service degradation, which often occurs days after the rains subsided when the water has seeped into the ground and infiltrated cables or even the wiring inside homes."

Because of the higher volume of service calls, she said it was taking longer to address each issue, but "we are working very hard to resolve every customer’s issue as quickly as possible."

Regarding why the news media was not told about the outage, "We generally notify the news media if an outage is widespread and requires customer action or has a significant impact on traffic," Nishida Fry said.

In situations where not all customers in an area are affected in the same way or at all, "we find the best way to troubleshoot an issue is to have customers report their trouble to us."

That said, Hawaiian Telcom is working on a plan to proactively notify customers about outages through social media and other communication channels, she said.

Calling Hawaiian Tel

The company issued a news release Oct. 20 advising customers that calls to its 24-hour service center (643-6111) were higher than normal.

Customers were told they could choose the option of receiving a call back within 24 hours or to make an online request via hawaiiantel.com/support.

"When a customer notifies Hawaiian Telcom about an issue, we request an alternate form of contact, such as a cellphone or email address, and do our best to communicate with them if anything changes," Nishida Fry said.

She said the company also has a "very limited" number of cellphones to loan out on a case-by-case basis, and these can be requested when reporting a problem.

"We realize that any length of disruption can be difficult and thank our customers for their patience and understanding as we work hard to respond to every customer’s issue as quickly as possible," Nishida Fry said.

Mahalo

To Honolulu Police Officer Uchida and Officer Zanella from the Wahiawa District Police Station and others who helped. Back in September our mother, Dolores Daite, went to the Wahiawa station to renew her driver’s license. When she went 

back to her car to retrieve some papers, she fell and went into cardiac arrest. They resuscitated her and stayed with her until the emergency medical technicians arrived. Words alone cannot express how grateful we are to these two officers, two good Samaritans and the EMTs. Because of them our mother is recuperating well and on the road to recovery. — The family of Dolores Daite

Write to “Kokua Line” at Honolulu Star-Advertiser, 7 Waterfront Plaza, Suite 210, 500 Ala Moana Blvd., Honolulu 96813; call 529-4773; fax 529-4750; or email kokualine@staradvertiser.com.