A small group of your neighbors — east of Taylor Road, from Rockaway Beach to Port Blakely — is exploring whether we can bring fiber-optic internet to our homes through Kitsap PUD. Faster, more resilient, and community-owned. We’d love to know if you’re interested too.
A couple of us who live east of Taylor Road started wondering: is there a better internet option for our part of the island? What we found surprised us — and we think it’s worth sharing with you.
Most of us on this side of Bainbridge rely on Comcast’s cable network or have turned to Starlink as an alternative. Both work reasonably well day-to-day. But a few things gave us pause — particularly around what happens during a storm.
Comcast’s copper cable infrastructure uses battery backups at neighborhood nodes. Those batteries typically last 4–8 hours. After that, connectivity goes down even if your own power has been restored. It’s not widely known, and most people only discover it when it happens. Starlink, meanwhile, requires grid power for its dish and router — so in an outage, it goes dark too unless you have a generator or battery backup of your own.
We also discovered something that genuinely surprised us: KPUD — Kitsap Public Utility District, the same utility that provides water service on Bainbridge Island — already operates over 1,000 miles of fiber-optic infrastructure across Kitsap County, including on parts of Bainbridge Island. They have an active residential fiber program, they’re pursuing federal funding to expand it, and they have a documented process for neighborhoods like ours to express interest and request an estimate.
We’re not here to tell anyone their current internet isn’t working for them. We just think there’s an option worth exploring together — one that’s faster, more resilient in a storm, and owned by a local public utility rather than a distant corporation. This page is our way of finding out how many neighbors share that interest.
Fiber cables transmit light, not electricity — they’re unaffected by power surges, lightning strikes, or the wet Pacific Northwest conditions that degrade copper over time. With a simple battery backup for your router, a fiber connection can stay live through most outages. That’s a meaningful difference on an island where windstorms aren’t rare.
Comcast cable is fast for downloading, but upload speeds often top out at 20–35 Mbps. If you work from home, do video calls, back up to the cloud, or share video — that asymmetry shows up. Fiber delivers the same speed in both directions, which changes the experience of being online from home.
Starlink works well in open areas, but our forested east-side neighborhoods can make line-of-sight to satellites tricky. Performance also varies with heavy rain and peak usage hours. For some neighbors it’s been excellent; for others, frustratingly inconsistent. A buried fiber line has none of these dependencies.
KPUD is governed by locally elected commissioners — not shareholders. Their rates and service decisions reflect community priorities, not quarterly earnings targets. For a long-lived piece of infrastructure like internet, that kind of accountability matters over time.
KPUD isn’t a new player we’d need to invite in. They already serve our neighborhood with water, they already operate a large fiber network, and they already have a process for neighborhoods to request fiber estimates and organize collectively through Local Utility District (LUD) financing.
Since 2016, KPUD has completed over 15 LUD-funded fiber projects across Kitsap County — some connecting as few as 10 homes — using 20-year financing that spreads infrastructure cost over time. The one-time connection fee is around $2,500 per home, folded into the LUD financing.
They’re also actively pursuing federal BEAD broadband expansion funding right now. Organized neighborhood interest — like this petition — is exactly the kind of signal that influences where that expansion goes next.
KPUD uses both organized community pressure and individual demand signals to decide where to expand their fiber network next. Do both — it takes about 5 minutes total.
Add your name to a coordinated ask to KPUD’s Board of Commissioners. A unified petition from Bainbridge Island residents carries real weight — especially as KPUD is actively deciding how to allocate federal BEAD broadband funding.
Sign the petition →KPUD runs their own fiber demand system at kpudfiber.org. Enter your address — if fiber isn’t available yet, you can request a cost estimate. KPUD explicitly uses these submissions to prioritize where to build next.
Go to kpudfiber.org →Not all internet is equal. Here’s how KPUD fiber stacks up against the alternatives most Bainbridge Island residents currently rely on.
Answers based on KPUD’s published information and what your neighbors have been asking.
Your signature tells KPUD’s Board of Commissioners that Bainbridge Island residents want fiber internet extended to our neighborhood. Takes about 60 seconds.
To: Kitsap Public Utility District Board of Commissioners
Your signature has been recorded. Please also visit kpudfiber.org to submit your individual interest request directly to KPUD — it only takes a moment and makes your voice count twice.
These are official KPUD tools and pages. Use them alongside this petition for maximum impact.
See exactly where KPUD’s fiber network reaches today across Kitsap County — and how close it is to our neighborhood.
View the map →Enter your home address at kpudfiber.org to see if fiber is available, planned, or to submit a formal interest request.
Go to kpudfiber.org →KPUD offers a 20-year Local Utility District financing program so neighbors can collectively fund fiber infrastructure.
Learn about LUD/NCLUD →