Starlink is good, Fiber is better.

Starlink and LEO won all the BEAD funding for Bainbridge Island, which is why KPUD only got 7 of the 8 areas they applied for funding awarded.

Bainbridge is a difficult location for satellite; lots of trees, difficult site lines. Starlink doesn’t make sense. Due to how the FCC rules competitive areas, it appears there is healthy competition between Xfinity and Lumen. In reality both parties have backed out leaving a monopoly for existing Comcast footprint and both will only build for Multi-Dwelling where they can make major bank and recover their investments in under 3 years.

So how about Starlink? If you are on the top of a mountain, at the end of miles of roads with no other subscribers, or some other situation where it is over $40K to connect, Starlink wins.

However, for any build costing less than $30K, it is cheaper and better to build with KPUD and use us for your service. The delta between our gig and Starlinks middle tier (which isn’t a reliable 400mb) is $80 / month. That will buy you $30K in financing from KPUD.

Here is a picture of someones router who has Net253 and Starlink. Note all the yellow lag spikes and the red total outage on Starlink. This is October 9th, 2026. Our service is perfect, which is what we strive for. Each of those yellows is a stuttered Teams call, circling buffer on Netflix and the red is a complete drop out. For context, this is a brand new home, in a large open developement with perfect sky visibility and professionaly installed equipment.

Don’t get me wrong, Starlink is great if your only options are dial-up, HughesNet, or ViaSat. If the connection estimate from KPUD is under $30K, your annualized cashflow will be virtually identical and you will have immensely better service with fiber. Plus, our rate of price increase is virtually flat versus StarLink’s constant upward price pressure and connection surcharges.