Hawaiian Internet Consortium Co-Founders John Hearton and Rodger Johnson Save US Taxpayers $330M

Hawaiian Internet Consortium Co-Founders John Hearton and Rodger Johnson Save US Taxpayers $330M

As the internet infrastructure was being built out in the United States, one state still struggled

with connectivity, partially because of its idyllic, yet somewhat remote location. There are

significant US Military assets on the islands and to ensure a common defense, those assets

needed robust internet connectivity to the US mainland. When the internet originally reached

the islands, if someone sent an email from the big island, to Maui, the route that email took

was to travel from the big island to California and then back out to Maui. The Hawaiian Internet

Consortium changed that.

John Hearton and his team collaborated with the Defense Research Engineering Network, the

United States Geological Survey (USGS), The University of Hawaii, Trippler Army Medical

Center, and the Pacific Missile Range Facility to form a collaborative agreement to build out the

network to support the people of Hawaii and the other organizations. This included support for

the USGS Early Warning Tsunami system.

“Early on we established the HIC and worked to build a more robust infrastructure to support

Maui High Performance Computing center in getting data back to the United States mainland,”

Hearton said.

At the time one low-capacity circuit cost roughly $1.5M per month from Oahu. The intent was

to be able to transport data from between Maui to the other islands and also back to the US

mainland. This would allow for more data to reach more users faster. The team built out a

larger high-capacity network that would enable them to talk between all of the islands. The

network included two diverse paths back to the mainland ensuring communications and the

network would not be able to be severed.

The total cost of that circuit was roughly $1.6M per year. This saved American taxpayers

annually about $16.5 million dollars or since its inception roughly 20 years ago, about $330M

dollars. More importantly the people of Hawaii have better communication infrastructure, this

includes our military stationed there.



John Hearton has experience in solving big problems. He’s worked with Congress and large

agencies to protect our country. He understands the threats to our communication

infrastructure and has a history of protecting them. Hearton has successfully ran Cybersecurity

companies and has written and contributed to much of the foundational cybersecurity

regulation still in practice today. His skills and experience are what Congress desperately need.

When elected and throughout his service, he will put the people of Florida District Eight and all

of our fellow Americans first.