{"id":208149,"date":"2015-07-27T14:49:46","date_gmt":"2015-07-27T04:49:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=208149"},"modified":"2015-07-27T14:49:46","modified_gmt":"2015-07-27T04:49:46","slug":"internet-tourism-tinian-businesses-benefit-from-saipan-network-outage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/internet-tourism-tinian-businesses-benefit-from-saipan-network-outage\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Internet tourism\u2019: Tinian businesses benefit from Saipan network outage"},"content":{"rendered":"

TINIAN<\/strong>\u2014Unlike the many businesses on Saipan that were and are being negatively affected by the islandwide network outage and inadequate Internet services since July 8, commerce on Tinian has actually benefitted from it.<\/p>\n

For almost three weeks now, Saipan has been struggling with negligible Internet connection, rendering some businesses such as Internet caf\u00e9s useless.<\/p>\n

As a result, Tinian experienced what Mayor Joey San Nicolas called \u201cInternet tourism.\u201d The island has suddenly become the place to be for Saipan residents who have extreme need for Internet and are willing to shell out $70 for the airfare just to have better access.<\/p>\n

According to Lot Bunao of J.C. Caf\u00e9 Restaurant, she noticed an increase of customers these past days. Lawyers and businessmen were among those who have been frequenting their place.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had customers that stayed here in the restaurant because they wanted to use the Internet. They didn\u2019t even stay in hotels,\u201d Bunao said. \u201cSome even just stayed in the airport because all they need is to use the Internet.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite being initially affected by the network outage, Tinian wasn\u2019t as badly impacted as Saipan with regards to Internet connectivity and capacity. Even 4G connections on Tinian were restored \u201cimmediately\u201d when compared to Saipan\u2019s restoration.<\/p>\n

Lorilynn Hotel also saw an increase in guests the past week, according to Digna, one of their employees.<\/p>\n

For San Nicolas, they indeed gained something from Saipan\u2019s limited Internet capacity.<\/p>\n

\u201cAgencies and businesses have come to Tinian to take advantage of our Internet here and we, of course, allow them to come into our office and use our WiFi or anywhere else within the island,\u201d San Nicolas said.<\/p>\n

He added that they welcomed those who came for help.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were very sad that the CNMI had to endure that, but very good for Tinian because we actually had more people coming to Tinian for that single purpose of using the Internet,\u201d San Nicolas said. \u201cWe\u2019re just being good neighbors.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TINIAN\u2014Unlike the many businesses on Saipan that were and are being negatively affected by the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[6156,6157,250,6158],"class_list":["post-208149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-caf-restaurant","tag-lot-bunao","tag-network","tag-tinian"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=208149"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208149\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=208149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=208149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}