US fiber firm Ziply Fiber is to acquire the Pacific Northwest assets of fiber-optic provider Unite Private Networks (UPN).

Kansas City-based UPN, which is owned by Cox Communications, provides fiber communications infrastructure services to schools, governments, carriers, data centers, hospitals, and enterprise business customers.

Cox, which acquired UPN last year, also owns Segra. Both Segra and UPN provide fiber infrastructure and services to business customers, while neither serve residential customers.

As part of the deal announced this week, Ziply confirmed it will acquire UPN's fiber assets, network, and customers in Washington, Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana.

According to the company, it will add more than 7,000 fiber miles across key cities, including Puyallup and Silverdale, Washington; Homedale, Idaho; Columbia Falls, Havre and Miles City, Montana; and Sheridan, Wyoming.

Ziply noted that it will provide a variety of both lit and dark fiber services, plus other commercial solutions to its customers.

Financial terms of the deal were not revealed.

The company itself is in the process of being acquired after Bell Canada confirmed it agreed to buy Ziply in a deal worth as much as C$7 billion (US$5bn) earlier this month.

“UPN has been a top-of-the-line provider of private fiber networks for more than 25 years and they’ve built a solid reputation both nationally and here in the Northwest that really made this deal something that we were really excited to pursue,” said Harold Zeitz, CEO of Ziply Fiber.

“Expanding our commercial footprint in the Northwest has been a priority for us this year, and it’s definitely a win-win to be able to do that while also adding new territory that can help us as we continue to look at edge-out markets on the residential side of our business.”

Ziply said that once the deal is finalized, it will be able to offer a variety of additional commercial fiber services on its own network, including 100G wavelength, 400G wavelength, 10 and 100G IP transit, 10G ethernet, dark fiber, cloud on-ramps, IP transit and peering, metro, and long-haul routes.

UPN serves more than 300 communities across 21 states, with 12,000 fiber route miles and 9,500 end-customer sites.

The company also stated its commitment to invest hundreds of millions of dollars to "build an advanced, 100 percent fiber network to both suburban and rural communities across the Northwest that have been underserved when it comes to Internet access."

Ziply Fiber is a local Internet service provider (ISP) that offers fiber Internet in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Montana to more than 1.3 million fiber locations.

The company has plans to reach more than three million locations in the next four years.

Last month, the company launched data center colocation services at more than 200 facilities across Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Montana.