TDS Telecom, the parent company of BendBroadband, announced Friday a pending deal to buy Crestview Cable, the cable TV and internet service provider in rural areas of Central Oregon.

Terms of the deal, which must be approved by the Federal Communications Commission, were not disclosed. The transaction may close in October, said DeAnne R. Boegli, spokeswoman for TDS Telecom.

TDS Telecom is buying Crestview Cable from California Oregon Broadcasting Inc., which owns television stations in Klamath Falls, Medford, Grants Pass, Roseburg, Eugene and elsewhere in Oregon and California, said Patricia Smullin, president and owner of California Oregon Broadcasting Inc., based in Medford.

Crestview Cable, which California Oregon Broadcasting has owned since 1982, is the only cable TV and internet provider the company owns, she said.

The decision to sell Crestview coincides with the announced retirement of Roger Harris, vice president for cable operations for California Oregon Broadcasting.

“If he hadn’t retired, I wouldn’t be selling,” Smullin said Friday. “He’s an expert in the cable industry and has been the strategic planner for Crestview Cable for decades.”

His greatest accomplishment, Harris said Friday, was bringing high-quality internet service to rural communities. Crestview, which serves Madras, Prineville, La Pine, Culver, Metolius and Crooked River Ranch, provides speeds up to 100 megabits per second to its internet subscribers, Harris said.

“Demand is increasing so fast (for faster internet service), that it’s hard to keep up with it,” he said.

TDS Telecom, a subsidiary of Telephone and Data Systems Inc., plans to add 21,000 service addresses to the adjacent BendBroadband system, which Telephone and Data Systems acquired from local ownership three years ago for $261 million. Crestview customers may eventually see a cable lineup similar to BendBroadband at similar rates, Boegli said on Friday.

“When the acquisition is complete, they will have a very similar product to BendBroadband today,” she said, “an improvement to what they have.”

TDS Telecom plans to upgrade the La Pine network with fiber-to-the-home, a “fairly significant investment” in high-speed internet service, Boegli said. She said work is planned to improve the network in Prineville, too.

“That network is going to have some more immediate speed increases,” she said. “We don’t have to replace that network like we have to do in La Pine.”

Boegli said the 21 employees of Crestview Cable would most likely be kept on, a practice TDS Telecom has observed in previous acquisitions. The two companies have been talking since January or February, Boegli and Smullin said.

Boegli said Crestview Cable will eventually be branded BendBroadband. “I wouldn’t say it’s an easy transition, but it’s a very doable network situation,” she said.

She said that TDS Telecom has made two substantial network rebuilds since purchasing BendBroadband in 2014. She said upgrades must follow because demand for ever-faster internet service is a constant.

“Fiber to the home or fiber as much as possible is what our goal is,” Boegli said.

— Reporter: 541-617-7815, jditzler@bendbulletin.com