Sandwich Isles Communications Inc. builds the state's most advanced fiber-optic network.

By Choo, David K.
Publication: Hawaii Business
Date: Sunday, April 1 2001

Al Hee, president for Sandwich Isles Communications Inc. (SIC) knows that if his company is successful in Kahikinui, it can be successful anywhere.

The 20,000-acre ahupuaa on the slopes

of Haleakala is the largest and most remote parcel m the state Department of Hawaiian Home Lands' (DHHL) inventory.

An hour's drive from Kahului Airport, Kahikinui is up the road from Upcountry Maui's Ulupalakua Ranch and is as beautiful as it is brutal. Once verdant rainforest, the area, which translates into "big Tahiti," is now wind-swept scrubland, sunny and hot in the daytime and foggy and cold at night. Since 1998, two families have called the vast area home. They have no electricity or water--true homesteaders. But last month, thanks to Hee and his company, the homesteaders now have telephone service and DHHL can start placing an additional 70 families who have been waiting to settle Kahikinui.

"This is really at the heart of what we are trying to do," says the camera-shy Hee as he gazes down at far-off Makena and Wailea. "We are bringing telephone service to Hawaiian homesteaders no matter where they live. By the time we are finished people here will be able to surf the Web as well as anyone in Honolulu. They'll be able to work from home or start their own on-line businesses."

Founded in 1995, Sandwich Isles Communications Inc. is a rural telecommunications company that has an exclusive agreement with DHHL to provide telephone service to the agency's 69 noncontiguous parcels totaling some 200,000 acres and located on the six major Hawaiian Islands. The company is financed primarily by long-term, low-interest loans totaling more than $400 million from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Rural Utilities Service (RUS), which is responsible for pormoting and supporting the development of utility infrastructure and services in rural America. This federal program is not based on race and has been in existence for more than 50 years. SIC's project is the first application of RUS funds in Hawaii.

In 1998 SIC completed its first project, providing telephone service to homesteaders in DHHL's latest Waimanalo development. Laiopua, above Kona, was next, followed by Kulana Oiwi in Kaunakakai on Molokai in 1999 and Kalawahine next door to Oahu's Papakolea. Other projects include Puukapu in Waimea on the Big Island, Kapolei on Oahu, and the aforementioned Kahikinui.