GREAT FALLS — A new Internet option is coming to the Great Falls area as well as many other cities in Montana. Ziply Fiber has been seen all over town putting in their new wires.
Ziply Fiber spokesman Ryan Luckin explained, "We started in May 2020, so we're four years into this. We've expanded to 130 new markets, we've brought fiber or fiber network in, and Montana is next. We're uniquely in the northwest, so we operate in Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana."
They're working to cover other areas such as Great Falls, Billings, Helena, Butte and Missoula.
Luckin said, "Construction will extend a little bit into the summer, but that at the end of the day, we'll be almost 10,000 addresses here in Great Falls that we're going to serve with fiber. Few weeks ago, we started this construction process, which which involves it is construction. We have to dig up some things. We have to get on these poles that you see here and get our fiber up there, so it's a bit of an inconvenience. There's some traffic that we have to move around. But at the end of the day, it's a rather short investment for something that's going to last a really long time."
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The company is making a push toward our market with "future-proof" speeds and technology.
Luckin noted, "We offer a 50 gig symmetrical fiber connection, which is, to be fair, you know, much more than anyone probably needs. But it is the fastest speed tier anywhere in the country for symmetrical fiber internet. And what we really think about, it's a nod to the future. Thirty years ago, we had no idea the types of bandwidth and capacity we would need. We also don't know what we're going to need 30 years from now. So we we can't predict the future, but we know if we needed some of those speeds, there's nothing we need to do to the network we're putting in today. We would just expand and that would be all you needed to do.
Ziply (website) is one of two high-speed options recently introduced to Montana - TDS is also rolling out service in Great Falls.
