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This morning’s Honolulu Star-Bulletin reported that Tri-Net Solutions has been installing a mesh WiFi network in Honolulu’s Chinatown. Mayor Mufi Hannemann will make a formal announcement of the new free wireless system at tomorrow’s First Friday event, but the network is already available. It’s not as fast as other services in the downtown area, but the city’s service is free and encrypted.

This project was first announced over a year ago. My first article on this topic was posted on 26 May, along with a preliminary map of the coverage area. Gordon Bruce, the city & county’s CIO, says that coverage may expand across downtown. The Star-Bulletin’s map shows several access locations near HPU, including Fisher Hawaii on Hotel and Fort Streets, and the Marks Garage. Tri-Net has installed at least 25 inexpensive mesh routers. Local business and property owners volunteer to host the routers and antennae.

There have been some changes. Hawaiian Electric and EarthLink have dropped out of the project. I discussed EarthLink’s recent problems on 27 August and 28 August, and discussed HECO’s plan on 11 June.

The city also revealed that first responders, including police, fire and other emergency services, have been outfitted with WiFi-equipped devices so that they can use the city’s service in their jobs.

From this morning’s Honolulu Advertiser: Hawaiian Electric is shifting its attention away from BPL (broadband Internet over power lines) to a more specific project: smart electric meters.

The testing site is appropriate: 3000 homes in the Ocean Pointe subdivision of Ewa Beach (Google map). Smart meters can do meter readings on their own, saving HECO employees from navigating Ewa’s ridiculous traffic snarl. These meters can also provide real-time monitoring of line quality and service issues. These features, if properly integrated with HECO’s monitoring systems and implemented throughout the island, might give HECO much better information during peak loads and disasters.

BPL delivers the Internet through electrical outlets

BPL provides Internet connectivity through existing power lines. Consumers could rent or purchase a BPL modem, plug it into an AC outlet, and get a broadband connection. For mainland US electric utilities, BPL is a rare opportunity to improve operating efficiency and create new businesses that relate directly to their core services. BPL Today claims the BPL market could be a US$200M industry. There are growing indications that BPL will be a key success factor (KSF) for the US electric utility industry within the next 5 years.

If HECO had been successful with a BPL consumer Internet service, the company could have been a formidable competitive rival to Time Warner Oceanic and Hawaiian Telcom in the Oahu broadband market. My June 7th post discussed how the TimeWarner-HawTel rivalry is focusing on basic issues like service speed.

HECO’s change in plans isn’t a big surprise. They were testing BPL Internet service with a dozen customers in the McCully area, so suspending that project only affected a few customers. BPL implementations in the US are usually expensive affairs, but the large number of multiresident buildings on Oahu might give HECO a chance to roll out BPL without restructuring their electrical distrbution system or buying extra repeaters.

CrunchGear and Reuters reported on May 15 that DirecTV is considering a BPL pilot project in a large mainland US city, and rolling out a WiMax service.

This article was first posted on my old blog at http://www.bloglines.com/blog/wsodeman?id=265

I enjoyed reading this article in today’s Honolulu Advertiser. There are several examples of worst and best practices in business writing.

It’s good to see that a few leading business schools, including Notre Dame, are including writing and communication courses in their programs. Students at my university, which has a large international enrollment, would benefit from a similar program.

Tom Clark, an entrepreneurship professor at Xavier University, summed it up well:

“Young people are wrapped up in the speed with which they communicate rather than seeing writing as a reflection of their best selves.”

Clear writing is important for any business student, no matter their age. I’ve always believed that learning how to become a lifelong learner is an important part of graduate school. E-mail, blogging, and text messaging make writing well a daily challenge.

If employees don’t understand the message, what’s the point?

If supervisors and managers must struggle to understand a subordinate’s report or memo, something is wrong. Here’s an poor example from American Savings Bank. The company and its parent, HEI, are now involved in multiple investigations and two lawsuits regarding a bank officer’s misappropriation of over US$600,000 in customer funds. I doubt that senior vice president Abel Malczon, Connie Lau or Bert Cormiel ever believed that poor writing could land them in civil court.

This article first appeared on my old blog at http://www.bloglines.com/blog/wsodeman?id=204

http://www.honoluluadvertiser.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061019/NEWS01/610190341

In this morning’s Honolulu Advertiser, Rick Daysog reports that HECO could have added redundant systems to prevent a blackout, but the project might cost US$1B in current dollars.

That works out to US$3400 per electric customer, using an estimate of 291,000 residential and commercial electrical customers on Oahu. The number of customers is less than the number of people on the island, as there are many households with more than a single resident. A household usually counts as a single customer as far as the electric company is concerned.

Oahu residents are asking questions that Californians have asked over and over after much larger earthquakes. In information systems, vendors, departments and managers sometimes create service level agreements that define service standards, service availability, the kinds of interruptions and problems that can occur, and specify procedures to escalate and remediate the problems when they do happen.

SLAs also define the responsibilities of the multiple parties involved in the agreement. If management decides to add more desktop computers, or implement additional server-based applications, then the agreement should be modified to account for the additional resources and time required.

SLAs often accompany disaster readiness plans (DRPs) and contingency plans, as companies become more reliant on telecommunications and information systems to conduct their most basic operations.

Sunday provided several examples of contingency planning. Some Oahu supermarkets had backup generators ready to power the cash registers and credit card readers. In an emergency, it’s difficult to run out to the bank and get more cash. Hospitals, police and fire departments called in extra staff to assist. The state considered calling out the Hawaii National Guard, which was actually on duty last weekend, but decided against that move.