More Competition, but we cannot race to the bottom.

There are new ISPs competing for service. One is trying aggressive “deals” and slightly lower prices. It is working; our customer signups have dropped. However, let me explain how this works. ISPs lease access to your home. This lease rate is a substantial (over 80% of the monthly fee goes to KPUD as a base). On top of that base rate, the ISPs have to transport data out of the county to connect to the Internet. Net253 uses KPUD/NoaNet for a complete solution; that’s how we get our latency so low. However, NoaNet /KPUD are primarily access entities serving internet to the underserved. They are not cost competitive like Hurricane Electric, Cogent, Zayo, or CenturyLink (yes them). Thus Net253 pays a premium for transport. I cannot lower my rates as I already earn less than 2 lattes (not Starbucks lattes) a month off the 100mb service. If you are shopping for ISPs, please understand Net253 is doing this as a community service, not for major profit. Nearly 100% of our actual profit is rolled back into equipment upgrades for the system.

Sure cost is a factor, but if you sort and choose by cost only, I argue that your are not looking at the best parameter set for choosing your ISP. We are still the only ISP on the network with operations physically located only in Kitsap county.

Thanks for reading my side of the story :)

-Steve

p.s. That base rate to KPUD is not a bad thing. It is actually good. That fee goes into the pool of funding to support the maintenance crews who are out keeping the thousands of miles of fiber strands in Kitsap operational. Just last week we had 2 accidents where vehicles struck poles and damaged the fiber system. The crews were out past 2AM two out of five nights working as fast as they could to repair the fibers. We need to pay KPUD enough to fund multiple crews so we can have fast, safe repairs.