As the internet progresses, society progresses alongside it. It took off in the 90s with the introduction of the World Wide Web, and civilization has never looked back. With a majority of the world having personal access to tens of trillions of gigabytes of data in the palm of their hands, digital technology has entered every sphere of a functioning society: media, healthcare, politics, economics, education, and everyday government services alike. Instant communication has made the USA safer – with improved emergency responses – and more connected as a national community.
While society progresses with the internet, the terms of a citizen’s social contract with the state have also evolved. As public consumption habits change and accelerate past physical services, Americans are increasingly entitled to fair access to the internet to be active citizens of their communities – to enjoy their rights, to carry out their responsibilities, to use public services, and to platform their voices.
Yet, not all of society gets the resources to progress at the same rate. Over two-thirds of the world’s population has access to the internet as of 2024. “We forget, as a society, that there are people left behind in the story of our progress. We forget what happens to those left in the dust,” says Albert Hee, President of Sandwich Isles Communications, a corporate-owned public utility company based in O’ahu, Hawaii.
Throughout Hawaii, Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) communities experience a vast digital divide in the distribution of broadband access. While the state has taken many strides to bring broadband access to all, 17% of AANHPI populations lack access to high-speed internet. This disproportionately compares to over 99% of the general American population having high-speed internet access.
According to the 2024 AAJC report, one out of every AANHPI individual reports using the internet only once a day, often because of limited connection and digital literacy. Similarly, more than 10% of these communities do not own enough devices to supply their households, with 11% only having access to a smartphone. Especially in the Hawaiian homeland, AANHPI communities are significantly dissatisfied with their lack of access to communication services.
Thirty years ago, the internet was in the process of being deployed to the mainstream, and the phrase ‘information superhighway’ was used to describe its infinite potential. “When there’s a road that goes to your house, it changes your participation in society and society as a whole,” explains Al Hee. “The internet does the same, it lets citizens become true and full participants in American society, it lets them access their buying power and the invaluable services that the modern world has to offer, overall improving their standard of living.”
After many of the services that have been converted into the online space simply no longer exist on the ground, and the online space doesn’t exist for 10% of the AANHPI population, their choice to participate in society and access information is ripped away. This is a detrimental risk to their access to emergency response services.
Unlike implementing broadband access in the outskirts of urban areas, where companies can leverage financial risk profiles and urbanize rural areas to increase their profitability, Native Hawaiian homesteaders’ land will never get absorbed into urban areas. There is only risk, no reward. Sandwich Isles took the high risk of providing broadband services to unserved Native Hawaiian homesteaders because no one else would, and as a Native Hawaiian homesteader himself, Al fully understood what this access would mean for them. What started as a dream, Al Hee was able to make into reality.
In the late 1980s, the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands approached Hee to open up otherwise unaffordable broadband services to remote areas of Hawaii.
To bring service to the unserved areas required Sandwich Isles to connect Hawaii’s six largest islands with an undersea fiber optic cable. Hee utilized miles of unused water pipes in the streets of O’ahu to extend Sandwich Isles’ network. He opened up unserved and underprivileged Native Hawaiian homesteaders to affordable high-speed internet – and by extension, full American citizenship – for the first time.
Thirty years later in 2024, this access was taken away from the homesteaders. “When the only road to your house is destroyed and turned back into dirt, you get left stranded,” says Hee.
In 2022, the Department of Hawaiian Homelands retracted the agreement that provided access to the unserved areas, leaving those communities once again unserved. The department believed that other companies would come in and serve them. However, the risk profile does not provide financial incentives to do so.
The promise held between the state and its citizens, to provide equal and fair access to its services was made, delivered, and then broken. This is because that promise depended on private companies stepping up to the plate and delivering broad access. Sandwich Isles, as a bona fide public utility, empowered thousands of marginalized homesteader families to access all the rights and opportunities available to Americans on the mainland. Now working to resume their broadband services, Al Hee and Sandwich Isles aim to bring back their broadband services for homesteaders, “What we delivered – a paved road to the information superhighway to communities that would otherwise remain unserved – is priceless. We are working tirelessly to reestablish that service.”
Media contact:
Name: Albert Hee
Email: [email protected]
