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CenterFuse Broadband Feasibility Report CenterFuse can help to get better broadband for businesses in a number of different ways as was described in the on the prior page. 2.Consider Providing Technical Assistance for Small Businesses Several businesses expressed the need for help with deploying broadband more effectively inside their buildings. This issue was raised by several downtown businesses located in older buildings where WiFi won't carry through older, thicker walls. But this could easily apply to businesses anywhere in the city. Businesses often don't for help with broadband questions and end relying on whatever ISPs tell them. CenterFuse may be able businesses with this and other technical issues. This might include hiring consultants to help businesses or providing small grants for businesses to find solutions. This solution also likely would lead to a training component so that businesses can learn the basics of how to best use broadband. 3. Create Diverse Routing to Ensure Emergency Resiliency As noted in the findings, the city is vulnerable to a major fiber cut since almost all Internet traffic to and from the city passes to the west to Seattle. Currently, City Fiber is the only ISP in the community with diverse routing to the Internet—City Fiber connects both through the east to Seattle, and to the south along US 97 to Portland. The danger of the current routing is that a catastrophic event along the fiber path to the west could cut off Internet access for everybody not served by City Fiber. Only the handful of customers served by City Fiber would remain in service after a catastrophic event to the west, while all residential customers and most businesses served by Charter and Consolidated could face a prolonged broadband outage. This is an issue shared by many cities in the US and this same situation is likely true for many other cities in the region. The incumbent providers could take advantage of diverse routing— in this case Charter and Consolidated could choose to also route to Portland—but they are electing to not spend the extra money. CenterFuse can lead the charge to implement diverse Internet routing. This might happen in several ways. The simplest situation would be to convince the current ISPs to use a second diverse route. A second Internet path from the city could either follow the path used by City Fiber to Portland or could go east to Spokane. If Charter and Consolidated continue to ignore diverse routing,then CenterFuse can push for other solutions. Most such solutions would mean migrating businesses and residents to an ISP and network that values diverse routing. There are probably a dozen different ways to do this that would include such options as having City Fiber expand its network to more businesses and to serve residences, partnering with a new ISP to build fiber everywhere, or even having CenterFuse fund a fiber network. All of these options warrant additional study beyond the scope of this project. 4. Improve Residential Broadband While the project focused on business broadband, it revealed key gaps in the residential broadband environment in Ellensburg that impact business vitality and opportunity. Unlike business broadband, which in some ways is better than many other communities, the residential broadband in Ellensburg is not as good as in other competing markets in the state. For example, the nearby cities of Wenatchee, Moses Lake, and Ephrata and surrounding rural areas have fiber broadband available to all residents and Page 12