Lumen Technologies plans to bring up to 1 Gbps service to more than 600,000 additional buildings nationwide, the company says.
The company is targeting both small and large-sized businesses in buildings near the Lumen network. “Powering hundreds of thousands of buildings with gigabit speeds is a game-changer for businesses – fast connections are no longer optional, they’re a requirement,” Ed Morche, the president of Lumen for the North American enterprise and public sector, said in a press release. “We’re delivering speeds to business owners in major metro cities that desperately need faster connections to meet their demanding business challenges and compete in today’s digital marketplace.
The company already has enabled more than 100,000 business locations in Arizona, Colorado and Washington with 1 Gbps Ethernet capacity on its Tier 1 Internet backbone. Overall, Lumen has 450,000 fiber route miles and customers in more than 60 countries.
It is a time of change for Lumen, which formerly was CenturyLink. In August, the company said that it will sell its incumbent local exchange carrier (ILEC) operations in 20 mid-western and southeastern states to Apollo Funds.
Lumen retained its large enterprise and competitive local exchange carrier (CLEC) operations in those states as well as its ILEC business in 16 other states. At the time, CEO Jeff Storey said that 70% of the retained markets are in urban and suburban areas and that those are the type of markets Lumen is likely to upgrade to its fiber-based Quantum offering.
The markets the company held onto are primarily in western states formerly served by U.S. West. The company will retain about 3.4 million broadband subscribers, with 687,000 served by fiber. The plan called for diverting about 1.3 million broadband subscribers, including 59,000 fiber subscribers and about 200,000 locations passed with fiber.
In September, Lumen said that the U.S. Postal Service selected it to modernize its network under a new USPS multi-vendor, indefinite-quantity, indefinite-delivery contract.
