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The Honolulu Advertiser reported yesterday that Pacific LightNet has been sold to a group of mainland and local investors. Current president pat Bustamente is in the investment group. All 95 current employees will be retained.

The company had been controlled by a Japanese firm called Tomen. This prevented PLNI from bidding on many state and Federal contracts. LightNet will become a more competitive firm in the local telecom market.

PLNI has 25,000 business customers and over than 6,000 Internet subscribers in the state of Hawaii, and provides colocation, broadband Internet, VoIP, long distance calling and other services. According to the company’s web site, its telecommunication infrastructure in Hawaii includes over 10,000 miles of terrestrial and undersea fiber-optic cable connecting the six major islands.

The sale price was not disclosed in the 15 February 2008 filing with the Hawaii Public Utility Commission.

A year ago, I wrote about China’s ill-advised space weapons test. When China complained about the US government’s successful takedown of a dead satellite last week, I have to shake my head and wonder. There’s a big difference. A year ago, China conducted an unannounced test of a weapons system that left thousands of debris chunks remain in orbit, as this January 2008 article from Wired shows. DailyWireless has more pictures and additional discussion.

This month, the US government announced its plan well in advance, and it wasn’t a weapons test.

As Jeffrey Lewis pointed out on Wired and ArmsControlWonk, some debris may remain in orbit. The official line, as reported in the New York Times and Honolulu Advertiser, is that the satellite was destroyed.

Writers such as Lewis and Farhad Manjoo don’t live in Hawaii, and may lack the personal stake that I and my fellow residents have in this story. It is much easier to hit a tumbling satellite than an inbound missile. I’m glad the US military can hit both, because Honolulu is a prime target.

But I’d much rather see international efforts to remove space junk from orbit, before an errant bolt or paint chip takes out a communications satellite or a manned mission.