Ziply Fiber has acquired a third local ISP, acquiring Washington-based Ptera for an undisclosed sum. Ziply CEO Harold Zeitz says the deal will not only help fill a gap in its fiber map, but will also provide it with fixed wireless access expertise that could come in handy in the future.
Ptera offers a combination of fiber and fixed wireless access services in a small part of eastern Washington and western Idaho. Its fiber coverage is focused on Cheney, Washington, although its website says it also plans to roll out fiber in nearby Medical Lake. In addition, it is looking to cover several other communities in the area with fiber, but declined to name them.
Ptera currently has more than 4,000 customers. As part of the deal, Ziply will hire about two dozen Ptera employees.
The deal is Ziply's fourth, and third in less than a year. Since June 2022, it has also acquired Washington-based Oregon ISP Eastern Oregon Net, Inc (EONI) iFiber, two companies that also offer fiber and fixed wireless services. Back in 2020, it acquired Wholesail Networks shortly after completing a deal to buy parts of Frontier Communications' network in Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana.
Reflecting on how it decided where to buy rather than build, Zeitz said, "We don't generally build fiber where it's available. So rather than skipping those areas that we thought would be appropriate for the network we ultimately wanted, it ultimately made sense to join up rather than skip an area or build on fiber."
Through the deal with Frontier, Ziply took control of approximately 1.6 million transmissions of major copper network assets. A year after the deal closed, Ziply announced plans to deploy fiber to 80 to 85 percent of its territory within three years.
Zeitz said on Friday that it now provides fiber service to 50 percent of that footprint, or about 800,000 locations, and remains on track to meet its goal. It is expected to announce its 100th fiber market soon. Back in September, the carrier also unveiled plans to address more fiber locations through a new edge strategy. For simple economic reasons, it can't run fiber everywhere. That's where the fixed wireless capabilities that Ptera, iFiber and EONI bring to the table come in handy.
Zeitz says that for the 15 to 20 percent of locations that exceed its economic threshold for building fiber, it will either use grants to fund its construction or use only fixed wireless. Its recent acquisitions "give us the opportunity to have teams that have experience in this area." He said, "There's definitely a portion of the footprint that's too expensive, but they deserve better Internet, so fixed wireless is a good option for that segment of the population." "We may build fiber where we have fixed wireless [today], but we may have some fixed wireless, and we may expand fixed wireless. We're looking at ways to do that."
In terms of grant funding, Zeitz noted that Ziply won more than $57 million in Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) support to build fiber to more than 21,000 locations. It has also been working with state and local broadband officials to identify additional opportunities and plans to participate in the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) program, he said.
