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CenterFuse Broadband Feasibility Report Support for a Fiber Network When asked if community leaders should prioritize broadband infrastructure, with 1 meaning no priority and 5 meaning the highest priority, respondents replied: 1 No Priority 19% 2 3% 3 15% 4 11% 5 Highest Priority 52% When asked if the city should improve broadband infrastructure available to residents and businesses, with 1 meaning no priority and 5 meaning the highest priority, respondents replied: 1 No Priority 18% 2 4% 3 13% 4 13% 5 Highest Priority 52% Interpreting the Results of the Survey It's easy to interpret a broadband survey in a rural community that has no broadband, and we have done surveys where 90% of citizens support finding a broadband solution. It's much more of a challenge to understand what the responses are telling us in a city like Ellensburg. Proponents of fiber will see plenty of support in the survey responses, but opponents of fiber can probably say the same thing. Following are my observations of what the survey is telling us: Choice of ISP. One of the most interesting results is the ISPs that the public has chosen. The results in Ellensburg don't look that same as what we often see in similarly sized cities. • 35% of households are using Consolidated. That's a larger percentage that what we normally see. Nationwide, the cable companies have been clobbering DSL for years in cities and the more typical penetration rate in cities for DSL is more commonly between 10% and 20%. We were surprised by the high DSL penetration since the speeds on Charter are faster. What is particularly surprising is that we heard nothing but bad things about the prior telephone incumbent FairPoint—which was just displaced by Consolidated in July 2017. We heard consistently that there were a lot of outages and slow repair times for problems when FairPoint operated the network and that things have gotten better under Consolidated. • We were equally surprised to find 4%of the residential market inside the city choosing fixed wireless. The wireless ISPs tell us that they compete in rural areas, meaning that customers in the city had to most likely seek them out. This doesn't speak well of Consolidated or Charter than residents would choose fixed wireless over both of them. • Even more surprising was that 4% of households are using satellite broadband. Satellite broadband is universally considered as harder to use because the high latency (delay)that comes from connecting to a satellite more than 20,000 miles above the earth. Even in Page 24