Friday, March 29, 2024

Ziply Fiber announces plan to bring high-speed internet to Brewster

Millions invested for expansion

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BREWSTER – Ziply Fiber, a Northwest-focused fiber optic service provider, announced last Friday, April 30, that it is introducing its residential/commercial network to Brewster as part of the company’s vision to bring high-speed internet to selected small communities in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Montana.

In an exclusive interview with The Quad last Thursday, April 29, Ziply Chief Executive Officer Harold Zeitz spoke about his company’s vision and services.

We’re building fiber over the next three years,” said Zeitz. “We are investing about half a billion dollars to build fiber to about 85 percent of the locations in our footprint.”

For Okanogan County that includes Brewster as the first target city in North Central Washington according to the company website get.zipleyfiber.com.

Brewster is an area which has no fiber,” said Zeitz, “It is one of the areas that is in the footprint that we acquired.”

Ziply signed an agreement to acquire Frontier Communications’ four-state Northwest area in May 2019, closed the $1.35 billion transaction in May of last year and began operations. At that time about 30 percent of its 1.7 million customers already had fiber access.

That meant that 70 percent did not,” said Zeitz who added that the goal over the next three years is to increase that access to about 85 percent of its customer base.

When Ziply acquired Frontier during the latter’s bankruptcy proceedings it retained 980 of the acquisition’s employees and is actively hiring 200 more. It also inherited 300,000 internet subscribers, 270,000 of those residential and 25,000 commercial. Ziply’s executive board is deep with experience in the communications technology field with more than 150 years of experience spread among its six officers.

We build fiber and bring it directly to your home or business.” said Zeitz. “We don’t think you have to live in a big city to get the best internet.”

Brewster is one of about a dozen rural Washington cities – and the only one in Okanogan County –among Ziply’s target sites. Another is Malden in Whitman County, a town largely destroyed by wildfire last September.

In the city limits of Brewster there are about a thousand locations,” said Zeitz who added that Ziply has competed the planning stages for the area. “We’re actually in the design and what we call the walkout stage,” said Zeitz. “It’s several months away but in the very near timeframe.”

Whether or not the nearby cities of Pateros and Bridgeport have Ziply Fiber in their future is another matter and one the CEO cannot predict in these early stages of the new venture.

We think that everybody deserves the best connective experience possible,” said Zeitz “People are choosing to live and work in different areas so it’s super important to have super-fast internet and that’s what fiber will bring to these towns.”

Brewster clerk/treasurer Misty Ruiz said the city had earlier applied for a grant to install a fiber system in the city.

We just wanted to provide our students with more opportunity to have good internet access,” Ruiz said.

When the COVID pandemic caused schools to close their doors in the spring of 2020 it became more apparent that many students lacked sufficient internet access to complete school assignments remotely. The Okanogan PUD offered “drive-fi” hotspots – drive-up Wi-Fi – to help provide locations throughout the county for those without adequate internet access.


 

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