My colleague Mike Outmesguine spent his Hawaiian vacation wardriving: For a nice read about how Mike enjoyed his time in the world's most beautiful place--I haven't yet been, but I have friends who have lived and visited Maui--read his report on finding plenty of free Wi-Fi and many insecure networks. Mike notes a little known fact that Hawaii is the crossroads of a number of fiber-optic networks, giving them what he reports as 1.2 terabits to the mainland U.S.
This reminds me of a fun Wi-Fi moment in the Florida Keys...I met a young entrepreneur who had set up a Wi-Fi + internet shop selling computer services along the main shopping street.
He was doing a brisk business as of December last year...selling reasonably priced wireless internet access on the beach--not a bad life at all!
As I understand it, the 1.28 Tb capacity is in the water between the U.S. and Hawaii but not all fiber is lit.
For a neat interactive map:
http://www.southerncrosscables.com/basic.cfm?page_id=370717252400061&se_id=108
One other SCN tidbit, the movie Lord of the Rings was produced in New Zealand, and the Southern Cross Network was used to send daily video data and other high-bandwidth updates from NZ to studio execs in Los Angeles.