Residents of Northern Pennsylvania and New York’s Southern Tier will have improved access to fiber optic internet speeds once a leading area service provider completes an aggressive buildout expansion in the region.

Empire Access, headquartered in New York, recently announced they broke ground on an 86-mile fiber optic expansion into Scranton. The company said the expansion into Scranton will be completed by the end of 2023, with a second 90-mile expansion to be completed in 2024.

Jim Baase, CEO at Empire Access, said the company, which was previously ranked as the Northeast’s fastest provider by PCMag, “will strive to support Scranton.

The company has previously said they have teams stationed in Pennsylvania to provide additional support to users in the Keystone state.

Empire Access’s regional fiber expansion into Western New York has been highlighted by the provider’s expanding territory in the area, which now includes communities like Canandaigua and Vestal, and will soon include Cortland, the seat of rural Cortland County.

Baase said the company’s expansion into new communities will force competitors “to improve their services by offering the community a better option for faster, lower priced internet service.”

Earlier this year, Empire Access began work on a 120-miles of fiber network in the region and announced their services would be available to Scranton residents in fall of 2023. 

According to Broadband Now, a digital publication that publishes independent research on broadband in the United States, as of 2023 over 90 percent of Pennsylvania residents have access to broadband. In Lackawanna County, where Scranton is located, over 94 percent of residents have access to broadband, but that number drops sharply when traveling to the adjacent counties. 

In Susquehanna and Wayne counties, both to the north of Scranton, less than 70 percent of residents have access to broadband, according to recent data.