Bell Canada, the telecom arm of Canadian conglomerate BCE, plans to buy Washington-based Ziply Fiber, the two companies announced Nov. 4. Bell Canada will pay approximately $3.65 billion U.S. in cash and assume $1.44 billion of Ziply’s debt.
Ziply would remain headquartered in Kirkland.
Ziply’s investments in broadband fiber-optic internet attracted its buyer. Buying Ziply would be Bell Canada’s way of “reinforcing its position as the third-largest fiber Internet provider in North America,” the press release said.
AT&T, Comcast and Verizon are among the biggest in this space; Verizon, in September, announced it would buy Frontier Communications, another fiber player.
Ziply formed in 2020 when it bought Frontier’s northwest line system.
Bell Canada was an arm of the old Bell system run by AT&T. It became independent from AT&T in 1975 when AT&T sold off the last of its ownership holdings in Bell Canada.
Bell Canada reformed into BCE, a much larger conglomerate: One of its crown jewels is CTV, Canada’s largest privately owned TV network.
Northern Telecom — later known as Nortel — was a longtime piece of BCE as well, but BCE spun it off before Nortel infamously went bust.
