BUSINESS BRIEFS
Sprint Nextel phones go dead
Advertiser Staff
Sprint Nextel's wireless phone service was disrupted statewide for nearly three hours yesterday after an unknown problem occurred at a Nextel switching office in Honolulu.
The company said the disruption began at 7:01 a.m., and service was restored at around 9:44 a.m.
However, some callers were not able to get through after service was restored because of high call volume.
The problem temporarily shut down all services for Nextel cell sites in Hawai'i. Service was restored after network engineers reset equipment at the Honolulu switching office.
There was no impact to the Sprint national network or to Sprint's global Internet-protocol wire network, the company said.
FONG, YEES GET SEATS ON BOARD
Shareholders of Finance Enterprises Ltd. elected three new board members during a special meeting over the weekend.
Valerie Yee and Nola Yee, daughters of company co-founder Clifford Yee, and Marvin Fong, son of co-founder and former U.S. Sen. Hiram Fong, were named to to Finance Enterprises' 13-member board on Saturday, said Steven Teruya, president of the company's Finance Factors Ltd. unit.
State Circuit Judge Elizabeth Eden Hifo ordered the meeting after Fong and the Yees sued Finance Enterprises, alleging the local financial institution failed to hold board elections for nearly two years.
ISLE FORECLOSURES UP 7% FROM '06
There were 7 percent more Hawai'i homes entering foreclosure in February compared with a year earlier, but the state still has one of the lowest foreclosure rates in the nation.
The 7 percent rise to 59 foreclosure cases put Hawai'i's rate at one foreclosure action for every 7,806 households. That compared with a national rate that rose 12 percent and equated to one foreclosure per 884 households.
Only seven states had lower rates than Hawai'i.
RealtyTrac, an Irvine, Calif.-based real-estate research firm that produced the report, said Vermont, with only one foreclosure, had the lowest rate, at one case per 294,382 households. The worst rate was Nevada, which had one case per 278 households.
