BendBroadband parent company TDS Telecom is working on a second round of network upgrades since buying the local internet service provider in 2014 and says customers should start seeing better performance during peak-use hours.

“During the busy hours at night, when people are streaming video, we’ll see the network can handle the demand much easier,” said Ken Paker, vice present of network services at TDS, based in Madison, Wisconsin.

Last month, the company added equipment at its network hub in Bend to increase capacity for nearly 13,000 customers, including 7,000 in Redmond, 5,500 on the north side of Bend and 400 in Terrebonne.

BendBroadband plans to make the same upgrade for the remaining three-quarters of its residential internet customers over this year and next, Paker said. “Between now and the end of the year, we’re adding four times the capacity in the market that’s there today,” he said.

Another upgrade covering the rest of Bend and Sunriver will come sometime this year, and two more pieces of equipment, which are cable modem termination systems, will be added in 2018, BendBroadband executives said. Each of the remaining upgrades will affect fewer than 10,000 customers, spokeswoman Cheryl McCollum said.

Paker would not disclose exactly how much TDS is spending on the current round of improvements but said it’s multiple millions of dollars.

Since paying $261 million for BendBroadband in May 2014, TDS has spent $28 million on various improvements to the local network, McCollum said. That includes keeping up with customer growth, new infrastructure to increase broadband capacity and power and generator investments to keep service available in the event of a power outage, she said.

Because of Bend’s population growth, TDS is also picking up the pace at which it adds new neighborhood-level nodes, Paker said. Each node serves 300 to 500 homes, but the long-term goal is to have one per 200 homes, he said.

The node additions have been ongoing at a pace of about 10 per year but will probably triple, said Wade Holmes, director of engineering and technology for BendBroadband. The company is focusing on neighborhoods that have seen a lot of growth, or where demand on the network is high, he said.

BendBroadband began offering a higher tier of internet service, 300 megabits per second, last May. Paker said the network’s maximum capacity is much higher than the top-advertised speed. Nevertheless, he said, during some parts of the day, when many customers are trying to use the network at one time, download speeds will be slower.

The company is focusing its upgrades on areas where use of the network is “higher than normal,” Holmes said. “We take our network utilization at peak very seriously,” he said. “We advertise speeds and we plan to deliver on speeds.”

— Reporter: 541-617-7860, kmclaughlin@bendbulletin.com

BendBroadband network improvements

Here’s a look at some recent changes at BendBroadband:

May 2014 — Telephone and Data Systems Inc./TDS Telecom buys BendBroadband for $261 million.

February 2015 — TDS engineering center expands to Bend.

March 2016 — New generator installed for seamless backup.

May 2016 — 300 megabit-per-second download speeds launched.

July 2016 — Technical support offered 24 hours, seven days a week.

March 2017 — Network upgrade for 13,000 customers.

Source: TDS Telecom