A bad deal?
The creditors of Paniolo Cable Co., Sandwich Isles Communications and Paniolo’s bankruptcy trustee reached a settlement agreement recently that preserves connectivity for homesteaders on Hawaiian home lands.
The agreement stipulates that Paniolo lease a maximum of two fiber pairs to Sandwich Isles Communications for statewide connectivity for $1 a year plus office, administrative and management costs.
SIC, or its successor in interest, can lease additional bandwidth at market rates if more capacity is needed. Sandwich Isles leased capacity from Hawaiian Telcom for interisland connectivity pre-Paniolo for $1.9 million a year.
This tri-party agreement provides insufficient bandwidth for future growth on Hawaiian home lands. The homesteaders are already receiving shoddy service from SIC. This agreement, if executed, will continue that poor service going forward.
The only winners from this agreement are Paniolo’s creditors, who agreed to this sweetheart deal. They’re able to auction the Paniolo asset without any significant liens or capacity constraints.
I strongly urge the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands object to this settlement agreement when its being reviewed by the bankruptcy judge June 1.
Aaron Stene
Kailua-Kona
Virus misinformation
I am surprised to see your newspaper, a platform of professional journalism, recently contribute to the spread of COVID-19 misinformation, albeit in the commentary section.
Vicki Vierra’s letter on May 13 (Your Views, Tribune-Herald) falsely claims that the novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) is a type of influenza virus and that the concept of social distancing lacks “science behind it” (before spinning off into a conspiratorial comparison with a “communist takeover”).
Besides the blatant factual errors presented (these are two different virus types altogether with many dissimilarities — lethality rates among them — and social distancing has been used by medical practitioners for centuries to effectively combat everything from plague to leprosy), these falsehoods are being used by a wide variety of actors with varying agendas to perpetuate irresponsible ideas that run counter to the public good — health safety countermeasures are unnecessarily inconveniencing the populace, this is all part of a secret plot, etc.
Please, leave the publication of this type of material to social media platforms.
John Atwell
Kurtistown
