People are looking for Hawaiian Telcom alternatives because they are unhappy with the service. Poor call quality, frequent call drops, expensive plans, and unhelpful support are among the chief reasons behind customer dissatisfaction with Hawaiian Telcom. Long wait times to receive assistance from support have forced people to start looking for reliable alternatives with better customer support.
This article provides information on the drawbacks of having Hawaiian Telcom landlines and the best alternative - Community Phone.
10 Drawbacks of Having a Hawaiian Telcom Landline
1. Unreliable as Phones will Go Down During a Power Outage
Your Hawaiian Telcom phone service will go down during a power or network outage or scheduled and unscheduled maintenance.
You will have to buy a battery backup to continue using your landline during power outages, but it is expensive and is not the perfect solution. The backup battery can help you only if you have a power outage, but your phone lines will be down if Hawaiian Telcom has an outage or other issues.
2. Calling Features Cost Extra
Hawaiian Telcom’s basic plan has no calling features, and any feature you need has to be added as an add-on at an additional cost. Only the expensive Go Local Plus plan has calling features like call waiting, caller ID, voicemail, etc.
Hawaiian Telcom offers unlimited calling only within the island. Unlimited nationwide calling has to be added to your basic plan and comes at an additional cost of $25 a month.
3. Installation Charges
Installation is free only with the Go Local Plus plan. The basic plan requires customers to pay an installation fee of $45.50.
Save money and time with the Zero-cost DIY installation of the Community Phone landline base. Read on to learn more about the Community Phone landline service!
4. No Spam Call Blocker
Americans lost an average of $577 to phone scams in 2022. With scammers devising dubious means like caller ID spoofing, people are increasingly falling prey to phone scams. In such scenarios, phone features offered by Hawaiian Telcom like Anonymous call block, *60, or any other manual block feature, are not helpful. These features require you to manually block a spam number after receiving the call and engaging the scammer.
Get the Community Phone built-in spam blocker that blocks unwanted calls before your phone rings. Talk to their specialist at 866-487-0599 to learn more!
5. Expensive Bundled Options
You may have to buy an expensive bundled landline package with services you don’t need, like the internet, TV, or OTT subscriptions from Hawaiian Telcom. The company will convince you that you will be saving money with this “upgrade,” but in reality, your internet bandwidth will be distributed unequally among your devices, leaving you stranded with an unreliable landline, a bad TV viewing experience, and unstable internet.
Switch to Community Phone if you want to continue using your landline without an expensive bundle.
6. Poor Call Quality
Hawaiian Telcom landlines use the internet for calls. Call quality and clarity on digital phones powered by fiber technology depend on the strength of your internet connection.
Since internet connectivity is inconsistent throughout the day and depends on network congestion, your device, surrounding areas, and other factors, issues such as call drops, poor call quality, and latency will be common with Hawaiian Telcom phones.
7. Safety and Security Issues
Calls from your Hawaiian Telcom landlines may leave you vulnerable to hacks, attacks, malware, and internet-related threats, as it uses the internet for voice communication. Hackers may intercept your data, leading to data and identity theft.
For example, you may be liable for credit cards, expensive purchases, and loans you never took.
8. New Hardware
You must get a modem or router to upgrade from copper wires to fiber optic cables. Customer reviews for many fiber providers state that you may be in for a hefty phone bill for installation and upgrade if you do not have to invest upfront.
9. Installation Costs and Challenges
You must install fiber-optic cables at home to use the Hawaiian Telcom landline. The expertise required for fiber-optic installations and the delicate nature of the cables make the entire process complex and expensive. A minor breakage or an incorrect setup could lead to myriad problems leaving you stranded without a landline.
10. Monopoly in Certain Areas
With large carriers shutting down traditional phone service, you will be forced to get a digital landline from Hawaiian Telcom if you live in areas where they have a monopoly. With the internet being patchy in rural areas, you may not get the service you pay for, leaving you stranded without a landline during emergencies.
If you want reliable and affordable landline service without bundles in rural areas, talk to Community Phone, the best wireless landline service in the US. Read on to learn more!
Community Phone - The Best Hawaiian Telcom Alternative
Community Phone is the best wireless home phone service provider in the US, revolutionizing traditional landlines to combine reliability, flexibility, and excellent features. Its wireless landline base connects your home phone to local cell towers, eliminating the need for high-speed internet to make or receive calls.
The company provides solid coverage across 99% of the US for you to experience excellent connectivity and superior voice quality in rural and low-reception areas.
Enjoy unlimited nationwide calling, features like spam call blocking, call forwarding, call waiting, voicemail, 3-way calling, and more at affordable prices. With US-based support, no hidden charges, and flexibility, Community Phone is the best landline service.
How It Works
The Community Phone landline base does not tie your phone to the internet as it works off resilient cell towers. The company's partnership with nationwide carriers and the unique design of the landline base ensure connectivity across 99% of the U.S., including rural areas. The built-in antennas on the base amplify signals from mobile towers to ensure superior voice quality in low-reception areas.
The 12-hour backup battery in the base ensures your phones continue working during a power outage or blackout in your area.
11 Reasons Why Community Phone Is Better than Hawaiian Telcom
Here are some salient Community Phone features that make it better than landlines from Hawaiian Telcom:
1. Reliable Landline Service Without Bundles
Community Phone is the best wireless landline service in the US, fighting to keep the landline alive. The company provides affordable and reliable landline service, the freedom of wireless access, and excellent calling features without bundling it with the internet or other services you don’t need.
2. No Hidden Charges
Community Phone boasts transparency and does not surprise customers with hidden charges on their bills. You pay what you signed up for.
3. Zero Cost Installation
You do not need a technician or advanced skills to install your Community Phone landline. You can set up your landline in 30 seconds with the following steps:
1. Connect the base to a power outlet. Do not turn it on yet.
2. Hook your phone to the base per instructions in the manual
3. Toggle the ON/OFF switch to the ON position
4. Turn on the power and wait for 5 mins. Once the base finishes setup, make a test call to ensure your phone works as intended.
4. Reliability
Resilient and thoughtful technology has made your Community Phone landline the most reliable option to stay connected with loved ones and emergency services. Their landline base works off resilient cell towers with power backups to support them during a massive outage. The base also has a 12-hour backup battery that keeps your phone working during a power outage or blackout in your area.
5. Connectivity
Community Phone has partnered with nationwide carriers to ensure coverage across 99% of the U.S. Since the wireless landline base does not need an internet connection to work, you will not face issues such as call drops, jitter, or latency.
6. Call Quality
Community Phone has partnered with carriers nationwide to ensure robust coverage and clear voice quality in rural areas. The landline base has built-in antennas that amplify mobile signals to ensure crystal-clear voice quality in poor-reception areas.
7. Security
Since Community Phone does not tie your landline to the internet, it does not leave you vulnerable to hacks, attacks, data, or identity theft. You get an additional layer of security as the wireless landline cannot be wiretapped like conventional landlines.
8. Geographical Limitations
Community Phone's landline service covers 99% of the U.S., including rural areas, making geographical limitations and the monopoly of certain carriers a thing of the past. The landline base's unique design and revolutionary wireless technology provide superior voice quality even in low-reception areas.
9. Flexibility
Community Phone's partnership with nationwide carriers and the unique landline base design ensure excellent voice quality and connectivity across 99% of the U.S. Experience extreme flexibility with your Community Phone landline, as you can take it anywhere without changing the number. Plug it into a power outlet and a phone, and your landline will work as well as new!
10. Emergency Tracking
First responders can easily track your location in an emergency, as they can trace the data originating from the cell tower and zero in on your location.
11. Hardware
You don't need fancy equipment for your Community Phone landline, except the landline base and a SIM. You will receive the SIM with the base when you sign up with Community Phone. The landline base is compatible with all phone models, saving you the hassle of buying new phone equipment. Save time and money with the zero-cost installation of the landline base.
Community Phone Landline Features
Call Waiting
The call waiting feature helps you handle two calls simultaneously. You will hear 2 beeps when there is an incoming call while you are engaged on one call. You can place the first call on hold, talk to the second caller, or route it to voicemail.
Spam Call Blocking
68.4 million Americans lost money to phone scams in 2022, a 23% increase since 2021. With scammers being persistent in their brutal attacks, manual call barring and phone features to block spam are no longer effective.
Get the Community Phone spam-blocker, your one-stop solution to block unwanted and unlawful calls from ringing your phone. The spam blocker challenges robocalls and blocks them before the call can ring your phone, ensuring protection against spam.
The "Safelist," a new Community Phone feature, allows you to list the numbers you want to accept calls from. Your phone will ring to let calls from these numbers through and block all others before the phone rings. You can update your allowed list anytime to add or delete numbers, or Community Phone specialists will be happy to assist you.
Studies report that several people miss legitimate calls fearing spam. Understanding the need to balance robust spam protection and legitimate calls, Community Phone is launching another iteration of the Safelist soon.
This feature will allow you to accept calls from numbers you want and route the rest to voicemail. Since Community Phone will not block other numbers, you can check your voice messages and respond to the ones you deem necessary.
The soon-to-be-launched "blocklist" is an aggressive spam blocker that blocks over 6 million spam calls based on an ever-growing database of spam numbers and a spam score. You can actively contribute to this database by adding a spam number to protect yourself and other Community Phone customers from scams and fraud.
Talk to Community Phone specialists to learn more!
Call History
Enable the call history feature and access information on incoming and outgoing calls to and from your Community Phone landline.
You can use this feature to
1. Return missed calls from known contacts
2. Store legitimate contacts
3. Check caller information against known contacts
4. Send a message or
5. Block spam calls.
Call Forwarding
Enable call forwarding to forward important calls when you cannot answer them from your business landline. You can opt from one of the several Community Phone options to forward your business calls to a number of your choice.
Temporary Forwarding: Use the manual process to turn call forwarding ON/OFF if you are temporarily away from your business phone. Here's how you can enable it:
1. Get a dial tone
2. Dial **21*1
3. Dial the 10-digit number you want the calls forwarded to and #
4. Three beeps will indicate you have enabled call forwarding
Follow the same steps, but press ##21# to turn off call forwarding.
Unconditional Forwarding: Forward all calls from your landline to a cell phone or another number of your choice and ditch your landline.
Conditional Forwarding: You can program several phone numbers to ring simultaneously with one incoming call, allowing the person available to answer the call.
You can also have numbers ring in succession if the first number is busy or does not answer. For example, your cell phone can ring if you do not answer your landline within 20 seconds.
Landline Texting
Studies reveal that millennials and later generations prefer texting to talking. Stay in touch with younger children or grandchildren by texting them from your Community Phone landline through the landline texting feature. The unlimited text feature and 2-way messaging enable you to see the messages from the recipient and continue the conversation.
Caller ID
On Outgoing Calls
Opt for the caller ID feature so the recipient can see your number or name when you make outbound calls. This feature can help loved ones answer your call or return missed calls without mistaking them as spam.
Incoming Calls
You will be able to see the caller ID of the person calling you if:
1. The person has enabled caller ID
2. Has registered in the national register
3. Your phone can support the caller ID feature.
Community Phone does not use third-party apps to provide the caller ID feature.
3-way Calling
Connect with 2 or more of your loved ones simultaneously with the 3-way calling feature, spend some great moments, and create memorable experiences. You can connect with your loved ones on the same call and hear them speak simultaneously without worrying about free calling apps, internet bandwidth, or patchy and dropped internet calls.
Benefits of Switching to Community Phone
Besides having a reliable landline service that does not require internet, Community Phone members enjoy the following benefits:
Unlimited nationwide calling and text: Stay in touch with loved ones across the U.S. with Community Phone's unlimited talk and text.
No internet needed: The Community Phone landline base works off cell towers without tying your phone to the internet. Since your phones are not dependent on the internet, they will continue working during an internet outage or maintenance.
Number choice: You can get a new local number FREE when you sign up with Community Phone. You can also transfer your existing number through their unique hand-held porting process.
Zero-cost Installation: The landline base does not require a technician to install it. You or anyone in your business or household can install your Community Phone landline in under 30 seconds and be ready to make calls in 5 mins.
24/7 reliable customer support: Contact Community Phone customer support via phone, email, and live chat 24/7 to experience world-class support from live agents. Glowing customer reviews on BBB and Trustpilot are testimonies of their commitment to customers.
Works during power outages: Save the money you would invest on a backup battery unit, as the 12-hour backup battery in the landline base ensures your phones continue working during power outages and blackouts.
How to get a Community Phone landline?
Follow these steps to get a Community Phone landline:
1. Call Community Phone at (866)-340-6256 and speak with a specialist.
2. The rep will check your area for coverage. Since Community Phone covers 99% of the US, this should not be an issue.
3. You get a local number FREE when you signup. Choose a new number or port your existing number. The specialist will help you get a similar number if your preferred number is unavailable.
4. Choose a plan to suit your needs.
5. Complete the signup process
6. Wait for your landline base, and install it per instructions. You can contact Community Phone support if you have challenges or questions.
7. Wait until the base completes the setup. Make a test call to check if your landline works as intended.
FAQs
What are the drawbacks of Hawaiian Telcom landlines?
The drawbacks of Hawaiian Telcom landlines include their unreliability, limited features, high prices, and poor customer service. The service can be expensive if you do not have a bundle with your internet service, and it goes down when there is a power or network outage.
What is the best alternative to Hawaiian Telcom VoIP?
Community Phone is the best alternative to Hawaiian Telcom. The company provides reliable, future-proof wireless landline technology that works off cell towers and does not need internet. With unlimited nationwide calling, no hidden charges, outstanding calling features, and world-class support at affordable prices, Community Phone is the best landline service in the US.
Conclusion
Community Phone is the best Hawaiian Telcom alternative for businesses and households. With their affordable plans, crystal-clear call quality, and feature-rich service, you can enjoy reliable landline service without breaking the bank. Contact their specialists today to learn more about how they can help you switch from Hawaiian Telcom.