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CenterFuse Broadband Feasibility Report business community. A more powerful way to work with Consolidated would be through the creation of a public/private partnership between the company with CenterFuse. Consolidated is interested in such partnerships because they have joined partnerships elsewhere. Consider the following example: In 2019, the New Hampshire legislature passed bill SB170 that allows municipalities to bond for a broadband network as long as the town doesn't have existing broadband speeds of at least 25/3 Mbps. Several small towns in the state took advantage of the new legislation and entered into a partnership with Consolidated,the new incumbent telephone company serving much of the state. Consolidated entered the New Hampshire market when it acquired FairPoint in 2017. One example is Dublin, a town of a little more than 1,500 residents. This town was not served by Consolidated and had no available DSL broadband—meaning satellite or cellular broadband was the only choice for residents. In the announced partnership, the town of Dublin is financing a $1.3 million bond to build fiber to every resident and business in the town. The voters passed the bond by a vote of 223 to 5. The town will own the network and has partnered with Consolidated to operate the business. Consolidated will make the bond payments, so the town is not on the hook for covering the bond. However, the residents of the town are the ones really making the payments. Consolidated plans to add a surcharge to each broadband bill of$11.50 per month until the bonds are retired. Residents are not required to subscribe to broadband and won't pay the surcharge unless they are a Consolidated broadband customer. This partnership benefits everybody. Homeowners get great broadband on fiber, a huge step up in technology. Consolidated gets new customers that are assumably profitable. The town benefits from having given everybody the opportunity to have much faster broadband. The New Hampshire towns were not in the same situation as Ellensburg since there was no existing broadband. But the partnership demonstrates that Consolidated is willing to pursue a reasonable partnership. If Ellensburg wants better broadband, then a conversation with Consolidated would be an important early step. It's likely that Consolidated would want a local contribution of some sort, but since Consolidated already has a 35%market share in Ellensburg a partnership would likely be quite a bit different than the New Hampshire example. C. Establish a New Fiber Network in the Community. There are a dozen different possible business plans for bringing a new fiber network to Ellensburg. For example, City Fiber could build broadband to every resident. A new ISP could come to the city and build a fiber network. CenterFuse has bonding capability and you could raise the money to build a new fiber network that could be staffed as a new business, operated with a partner, or used to provide open access to multiple ISPs. To contemplate such expansion of fiber would generally warrant a full fiber feasibility study that studies the cost of building fiber and that creates various business models that look at a myriad of operating models. Page 14