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CenterFuse Broadband Feasibility Report Consolidated is using older versions of DSL technology installed years ago by FairPoint. Upload speeds on Consolidated are universally slow, with almost 80% under 1 Mbps. 5. Slow broadband outside the city. Broadband just outside of Ellensburg is extremely slow. In many cases the only landline broadband option is slow rural DSL. DSL rarely has download speeds of more than a few Mbps in rural areas. Some rural residents around Ellensburg can buy broadband from several fixed wireless providers, assuming they can see a wireless tower from their home. The only other option today for rural broadband is satellite, which has speeds up to 50 Mbps, but which has superhigh latency that makes it hard to connect to real-time applications like streaming video or connecting to a home or school server. Slow broadband outside the city is significant for several reasons. First, many of the business owners interviewed live outside the city and say they can't connect to their businesses from home. Further, a significant percentage of the work force in the city lives in surrounding areas that don't have broadband—and cannot easily work from home. Economic development implications. The quality of residential broadband has implications for economic development. Businesses thinking about relocating have broadband near the top of the list of issues. Businesses should like the availability of fiber in downtown Ellensburg, but they are going to be less satisfied with residential broadband offerings. Businesses want employees to be happy with home broadband even if they don't expect them to work from home. New businesses are also going to judge the broadband environment for the area, not just for the city limits. The fact that the areas surrounding Ellensburg have really poor broadband could be a negative for companies considering relocating. The residential broadband in and around the city also has economic impact in terms of the ability to attract people who want to work from home. Jobs that can work remotely from home was already one of the fastest growth areas of the economy before the pandemic and has become a major issue as people are abandoning the big cities. Attracting people to live in Ellensburg while earning a salary from Seattle or other urban areas can be a huge boost to the local economy and local businesses. Another consideration for economic development is that there are nearby cities with better broadband than Ellensburg. For example, the nearby cities of Wenatchee, Moses Lake, and Ephrata have fiber broadband available to all residents and businesses along with much of the surrounding rural areas. This fiber is provided by the Public Utility Districts (PUDs). Looking to the west, the broadband in Seattle and surrounding communities is faster than in Ellensburg. During the interviews, a number of businesses reported that they are seeing an influx of new residents moving to the Ellensburg area during the pandemic, mostly from the Puget Sound area and other metropolitan areas. This finding is validated to some extent by the fact that US Census data shows Kittitas County to be one of the top ten fastest growing microregions in the nation. We don't know if recent growth is any faster than before the pandemic. But businesses report that Ellensburg is a place people are moving to in substantial numbers. Several businesses told us they expect new residents will be disappointed in Ellensburg's residential broadband and that internet services are likely better in the places they are moving from. In conclusion, if one of the goals of CenterFuse is to attract new businesses, the quality of the overall broadband environment must be a priority. It's not enough that downtown businesses or some Page 7