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CenterFuse Broadband Feasibility Report Benefits to the Business Community. Ellensburg has already realized some limited benefit from having City Fiber connect to downtown businesses. Further, Consolidated says it's willing to bring fiber outside of downtown. But there are still businesses in the city not on fiber. There are numerous benefits from fiber broadband for businesses. • Impact on Day-to-Day Operations. While almost every business is unique, each business can usually rattle off the ways that inadequate broadband has hindered them from being fully productive. Businesses without adequate bandwidth must forgo or compromise on how they communicate with the world and function day-to-day. Businesses tend to lower expectations and work within the constraints of a broadband connection, fiber-based connections remove all such constraints. We could make a list of 40 or 50 ways that businesses routinely require more broadband today than they did in the past. One good example is that most businesses now operate some software that works in the cloud—meaning a broadband outage kills productivity. • Entrepreneurship. Every community has success stories of companies that started in a home that are now significant employers in the community. Many communities have developed business incubator sites to support and promote start-up businesses. Good broadband is essential for a start-up ecosystem. • Diverse Routing. Businesses want more than just fast broadband. They often require multiple feeds of broadband from different ISPs, on diverse routes to guarantee that they don't lose connectivity. • Smart Factories. The pandemic uncovered major problems in the US supply chain and both political parties are now talking about a big government push to bring manufacturing back to the US, particularly in vulnerable areas like medicines and electronics. Over the past decade the US has created over 900,000 jobs in newly built"smart" factories. Smart factories need a lot of bandwidth for functions like the following: o Programmable Robots. Automated factories are using robots that can perform a range of different tasks that can be directed by software to perform the need task at the right time. o Collaborative Robots (Cobots). Collaborative robots work with human operators to take over time-consuming or high-precision work to enable the human operator to concentrate on the tasks that require judgement and experience. o Precision Manufacturing. Robots can be used to perform high-precision tasks that were difficult and time-consuming with human operators. o Making and Handling Customer Materials. Factories are manufacturing modern materials like carbon nanotubes on site as part of the manufacturing process. o Performing Complex Chemical Processes. Automated machines are being used to handle the creation of complex chemicals that are either dangerous to handle or that require highly precise processes to create. o Remote instructions. Robots can be directed by remote engineers or technicians from a different location when that's needed for custom tasks. o Equipment Monitoring. Sensors are used to monitor machinery and robots to predict machine failures and to dispatch repairs or order replacement parts before they are needed. Economic Development. Many cities claim huge economic development benefits from building fiber. Ellensburg is already seeing some of this benefit through the rush of businesses to use fiber provided by City Fiber. However, the City Fiber venture is a limited success that has only brought broadband to fifteen existing businesses. Page 83