KIRKLAND, Wash. — Gig-speed fiber continues to make its way across Union and Wallowa counties.

Ziply Fiber announced on Friday, Aug. 13, that it is bringing gig-speed fiber Internet service to 14 additional markets across Washington and Oregon, including Cove, Elgin, Imbler and Joseph, this calendar year.

This latest expansion is in addition to the 22 new market builds, which included La Grande and Enterprise, announced in the spring.

This brings the total number of fiber expansion markets to 52 since the Washington-based company acquired the Northwest operations of Frontier Communications in 2020.

The company is investing $500 million and building an advanced fiber network to smaller towns and rural communities across the Northwest that have been underserved when it comes to Internet access.

The new expansion will represent more than 38,000 new fiber-ready addresses once construction is complete.

“Many of the communities we’re upgrading have never experienced anything like fiber before,” said Harold Zeitz, chief executive officer of Ziply Fiber. “We’ve seen an increased demand for high-speed Internet to support all the activities we do online, whether that’s online learning, streaming entertainment, or working from home. To support this, we’ve spent the last year investing and constructing a new state-of-the-art fiber-optic network, and we’re thrilled to bring these improvements to rural and urban communities in the Northwest.”

While it will take time to upgrade 250,000 square miles of land throughout Ziply Fiber’s service area with new fiber-optic cables, local hubs, new offices and new hardware to run the network, the company is capitalized for and committed to expanding fiber to cover more than 80% of its territory in the next three years.

As part of the work, construction crews will be busy building fiber service in stages through several areas of each city and town. While the work will take several weeks and months to fully complete, the company expects to connect its first sets of customers in each town before the end of the calendar year, and to add more addresses each week as the build continues.

Ziply Fiber’s headquarters is in Kirkland, Washington, and the company has major offices in Beaverton; Everett, Washington; and Hayden, Idaho.