Spokane Valley-based Wired or Wireless Inc. has acquired Pend Oreille Valley Network and plans to upgrade the infrastructure to better serve the Newport, Washington-based company’s existing customers, says WOW president Bill Geibel Jr.

Mike Puryear, chief financial officer at the high-speed internet and phone-service provider, says the company has acquired Pend Oreille Valley Network’s operational assets, with the exclusion of the company’s vehicles.

Geibel says of the acquisition, “It helps fill some holes that we had in our wireless network, so it complements our existing infrastructure.”

Geibel declines to disclose the terms of the transaction. 

Additionally, WOW has purchased the roughly 1,600-square-foot building at 108 S. Washington, in Newport, from the Pend Oreille Valley Network to house its county operations, says Puryear. 

More than 700 customers have been added to WOW’s network, he adds, bringing the total number of customers served by the company to over 3,600 across Eastern Washington and North Idaho.

The company also brought on two of the Newport company’s employees, the company had originally had a staff of five, says Puryear. 

In total, WOW has 17 employees now.

“We intend on keeping those employees in Newport, serving the community,” says Puryear. “That office will continue supporting all of our operations in that area.” 

Following the acquisition, the company’s service area is a roughly 100-mile radius from Spokane, extending south to Tekoa and Malden, Washington, and north to a few miles south of the Canadian border. West to east, the company’s service area ranges from Davenport to the Idaho-Montana border, Geibel says.

WOW plans to upgrade the existing infrastructure in the former Pend Oreille Valley Network service area, says Puryear.

“We’re making a substantial investment to upgrade all of their wireless infrastructure and substantially expanding the capacity of what POVN already had in the Newport area,” he adds.

The company plans upgrades to four major towers in the area, and up to seven relay sites as part of the acquisition, he adds.

“We’re going to be upgrading and expanding capacity to all of those sites to improve both the service quality and throughput capacity to all those customers,” says Puryear.

The company already has received some microwave licenses to proceed with the point-to-point connections between towers, he adds. 

Further, the company will be tying in a new backbone to its network from Pend Oreille County, as well as upgrading its network backbone in Deer Park and Liberty Lake.

“This is a major upgrade to our network. It’s allowing us to close a triangular ring between Newport, Liberty Lake, and Ponderay, Idaho,” Puryear says. “We’ll be the only provider in Newport that has fully redundant services that aren’t dependent on the Pend Oreille Public Utility District for bandwidth into Newport.”

Geibel says that the company is investing roughly $1.5 million in upgrades across its network.

Puryear adds it has invested $450,000 in its infrastructure, so far.