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From this morning’s Honolulu Advertiser: the June 26 issue of PC Magazine has ranked the state of Hawaii next to last for Internet speed. Only Alaska is slower. The PC Magazine article has an interactive map that shows overall results and details for each state.

These findings have some face validity, as both states are non-contiguous parts of the nation. Almost every packet that comes into Hawaii is delivered on a cable or through a satellite. Mainland ISPs can connect to several different backbones as needed to reduce latency and increase reliability. In the 50th state, we get what we get. Given the state’s small population, it’s not surprising that Hawaii barely shows up in Akamai’s network performance charts.

PC Magazine collected results from 40,000 users around the US between May 2006 and April 2007. The magazine didn’t reveal how many Hawaii users participated in the test.

Still, Time Warner Oceanic and Hawaiian Telcom will be fielding questions from residential and commercial customers for the next few days. Alan Pollock, VP of Marketing for TWO said that company’s service is “much faster than Hawaiian Tel. it’s not even close.” In fact, TWO has used the tagline “fastest Internet service in Hawaii” for several years.

PC Magazine’s numbers tell a different story, in this graphic from the Advertiser.

While PC Mag’s executive editor, Jeremy Kaplan, guess that Hawaii’s location played a part in the state’s poor performance, both HawTel and TWO claim that factor doesn’t matter. Pollock claimed that rural users who participated in the PC Magazine tests may have hurt TWO’s numbers. But that claim contradicts the company’s advertising.

HawTel chief marketing officer Mike McHale said the company was pleased with its ranking, but he disputed the state’s poor performance in the survey.