By the beginning of 1997, Volker predicted, at least 100 buildings statewide, housing thousands of customers, would be getting local phone service from his company.
Like so many others in the industry, however, Volker was much too optimistic.
Today his company, GST Telecom Hawaii, is providing dial-tone service to less than a dozen customers, all in a small residential development on Maui.
"It took us longer than we anticipated" to launch the service, he says.
Join the crowd.
From long-distance giant Sprint Corp. to Time Warner Inc. subsidiary Oceanic Communications, Hawaii's telecom companies have missed the mark in heralding the coming of competition.
With the exception of the state's wireless phone business and the interisland toll market, two sectors where consumers have benefited from stiff competition, the reality has not matched the promise -- at least not yet.
Blame it on corporate chest-thumping. Blame it on the difficulties of revamping a decades-old monopoly system. Blame it on GTE Hawaiian Tel -- competitors of Hawaii's monopoly carrier certainly do.
Whatever the reasons, local competition -- and the ensuing consumer benefits touted by the companies -- isn't expected to arrive on a widespread basis for months.
Sprint, which a year ago projected getting into the local phone business in 1996, now doesn't anticipate entering that market until late this year at the earliest.
AT&T, which likewise projected a 1996 launch, now is looking to early 1998 instead.
Oceanic Communications, which is laying a fiber-optic network that would compete with Hawaiian Tel's, has pushed back its projected mid-1997 entry to later in the year for commercial customers.
Residential customers, however, are out of luck. Oceanic has postponed plans to serve that market for at least two years.
GST, the most optimistic of the bunch, projecting an October 1996 launch, started offering dial-tone service to the Maui customers only last month.
It expects to start hooking up commercial customers later this month.
Even Hawaiian Tel, which under federal and state law must allow competitors to tap into its phone network, missed the mark in forecasting the coming of competition.
A year ago, Kevin Payne, a company vice president, said he expected the local market to be fully competitive by the beginning of 1997.
More than three months into the year, there's still no telling when that projection will come true.
What's going on here? Why have so many executives been so off base?
Indeed, GTE has found plenty to contest. It has gone to court to challenge key government rulings at the federal and state levels, creating legal obstacles and regulatory uncertainty that has forced competitors to delay plans.
In the meantime, GTE has aggressively jumped into the domestic long-distance business -- thanks to the federal telecom bill. GTE is the only carrier currently able to offer local and long-distance service, a significant marketing advantage.
"They want to do whatever they can to put off competition while they try to secure their markets," said Yukio Naito, chairman of the Public Utilities Commission, which regulates the local industry.
Payne said GTE has long supported national efforts to encourage competition but is contesting rulings it believes are unfair. The government orders would require the company to sell access to its Hawaii phone network at prices well below cost, giving competitors an unfair advantage, he said.
"We're looking out for our interests and consumers' interests," Payne said.
But the commission has rapped the utility on several occasions for being unreasonable or uncooperative, effectively hindering competition.
In January the PUC took the rare step of fining the company $255,000 for resisting the commission's order to allow a new carrier, TelHawaii Inc., to serve the Ka'u area of the Big Island.
GTE has appealed the ruling to the Hawaii Supreme Court, claiming it is being forced to dispose of assets.
Until the fine was levied, GTE was reluctant to provide TelHawaii with information essential for taking over the Ka'u market, and TelHawaii several times had to ask regulators to intervene, said General Manager Dan Gordon. "That just delays everything," he said.
Similar sentiment is voiced by other competitors.
"If their intent was to slow us down, they're doing a good job of it," said Ken Sandefur, vice president of AT&T Hawaii.
Contributing to the delay, AT&T and GTE couldn't agree on how the long-distance giant would be allowed to resell local service using GTE's network. The commission eventually had to arbitrate an agreement.
Payne said GTE's competitors are making unreasonable demands and therefore have only themselves to blame for the delays.
Much of the disagreement focuses on pricing -- how much competitors must pay GTE to use part or all of the company's local network.
"The fastest way (into the market) is to simply adopt what we've recommended," Payne said.
GST Telecom has been able to bypass some of the more contentious issues because it is offering dial-tone service through its own fiber-optic network, which connects with GTE's, and not on a resell basis, as AT&T and Sprint are proposing.
But GST's arrangement limits the company to serving only buildings it connects to its network.
Whether a company builds its own network or piggybacks onto GTE's, providing the service requires significant financial resources.
And if Hawaii's regulatory or legal environment isn't conducive to making such investments, state consumer advocate Chuck Totto wonders whether carriers might decide to spend their money in markets with better potential returns. "It's a serious concern for Hawaii," he said.
Eric Tom, local general manager for Sprint, shares a similar concern.
If companies aren't able to effectively compete with GTE, "the consuming public is the only one hurt in the end," Tom said. "We could very easily have a dominant carrier here and very little choice."
