SIMPLY, ZIPLY
Ziply Fiber is Just Getting Started
By Noah Ziegler
Ziply Fiber’s transformation from a newly formed regional player into one of the fastest-growing and most innovative broadband providers in the U.S. is a case study in focused execution, network-first thinking and customer-centered leadership. With operations spread across four states, the company has quickly become a model for what modern fiber providers should strive for.
Guided by an experienced leadership team since its formation five years ago, Ziply has built a reputation for delivering the fastest residential internet in the U.S.—offering as high as 50 Gig speeds.
“It’s a generational opportunity. We’re building infrastructure that our communities use for business and education and fun for generations,” CEO Harold Zeitz says. “Our focus is on a few very small things. We’re really focused on creating a great experience for our customers, and we believe it starts with the best and fastest network. So, 50 Gig, we think that’s a part of it. It’s not so much that we’re trying to put out a press release [saying], ‘We’ve got 50 Gig.’ We actually deliver 50 Gig to customers.”
When Ziply launched in May 2020, it inherited what Zeitz describes as a “downtrodden company” after acquiring the Northwest operations of Frontier Communications. Rather than patching up old infrastructure, the team focused on a clean-slate approach to put fiber at the center of the spotlight and simplify processes.
That strategy is paying off. Ziply’s built fiber to over 150 markets across Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana, many of them being rural or underserved areas prior to the company’s arrival. In 2024, Ziply built 2,500 miles of fiber, expanded to more than 20 new communities, achieved its highest-ever customer satisfaction scores and introduced WiFi 7 technology to support wired speeds of up to 10 Gbps and wireless speeds up to 3.5 Gbps.
“It starts with two concepts. One is, service always works. No one ever has to reach out to you,” says Chris Denzin, COO. “Then, the other one is, everything is same-day. There’s an immediacy to install the service. You’ve got those two concepts that drive everything, so if you think about ‘everything just works,’ you have to invest in your network. You have to have redundancy, diversity. You have to manage capacity. All of those things go together to deliver a great experience.”
At the heart of Ziply’s strategy is an aggressive yet disciplined approach to network buildouts. To accelerate those projects, it has leaned into soft-surface deployment methods that allow Ziply to trench through soft ground faster and more cost-effectively, which minimizes disruption and allows for larger reach.
“In the Northwest, there’s a lot of rock—we call it cobble—it’s because of the way the glaciers form the area. Some parts of the country, there’s sort of loamy soil and farmland, it’s easier to dig in, etc., and so sometimes methods of going underground are slow and expensive,” Zeitz says. “We always try to come up with new methods, and one of these methods is this soft surface. It’s a larger vehicle that sort of rides along between the road and the private property where there is not a sidewalk. It’s basically slicing in 18-36 inches deep, while it’s pressing in the conduit, and then we put fiber right in it.”
Another practice Ziply follows is that between every two homes, it installs a flower pot and it splices and coils up the drop so it’s already set up for installation. Not only does that enable faster builds at lower costs, it ties back to the “same-day” priority with regards to repairs and other maintenance-related tasks.
The company runs the network at a capacity lower than other providers typically do, thus enabling customers to experience 0% congestion and minimal interruptions when trying to access the internet. It’s part of the effort to make the customer experience as seamless as possible. Since its formation, Ziply has improved its Net Promoter Score by nearly 100 points and averaged higher than 70 in each quarter throughout 2024. Additionally, Ziply’s proud of the 4.48-star rating with nearly 1,500 reviews on the Better Business Bureau’s website, and a 4.4-star judgment via Google based on 1,400 reviews.
“We’re easy to do business with. We don’t require bundles, we don’t have contracts, we don’t have data caps, we don’t have installation fees. We removed a lot of the friction from the process, and we always focus on having the customer experience at the forefront of every interaction. Whether they’re going to the website or calling the call center, you don’t have to traverse a complex IVR tree to get to us. You can get a human by pressing a button,” says Denzin.
Ziply’s ambitions haven’t gone unnoticed. In November, it was announced Bell Canada entered an agreement to acquire Ziply Fiber for approximately C$5 billion in cash and the assumption of outstanding net debt (C$2 billion) to be rolled over at transaction close. In July, the deal got a stamp of approval from the FCC, further paving the way for the next era of Ziply’s early dealings.
“We have more to build. We have more communities to serve. We anticipate and planned to expand at a rapid rate, and we’ll continue doing that,” Denzin says. “We have a new partner, Bell Canada, or BCE, so a great partner. They’ve got tremendous success over long periods of time building and operating the very best fiber network in Canada, and certainly we want to continue to expand our capabilities here. It’s naturally aligned [with] two companies that are very prideful in having the very best fiber network.”
Ziply may not be the largest provider in the country, but the Northwest certainly knows its name now. Rapid expansion, pinpoint execution and willingness to venture into where others won’t make Ziply a force to be reckoned with in the years to come.
“I’ve learned a lot in my career from lots of other folks, and we focus on three things here: we focus on we think simple wins, simplifying and automating things is super valuable and we like to think that we’re always figuring out ways to get better,” Zeitz says. “It doesn’t have to be sort of magic, big-step functions … What I think is just super cool is that this is going to be here for generations. My kids and their kids will be using this.”
Fast Fax
- Ziply’s soft-surface deployment method allows its fiber builds to reach 30-40% more homes compared to traditional approaches.
- Ziply says it is the only ISP to deliver 50 Gig symmetrical service across its full fiber footprint.
- The company supported more than 400 community events across its footprint in 2024.