CenturyLink is mashing the gas pedal on the build out of its fiber network that serves its residential and business customers.
In 2019, CenturyLink expanded its fiber network to reach an estimated 300,000 additional homes and small businesses with its gigabit service. CenturyLink's consumer fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) projects provide symmetrical speeds of up to 940 Mbps. The faster speeds were enabled in parts of Boulder, Colo., Spokane, Wash., and Tucson, Ariz. last year.
CenturyLink will build out its fiber network to an additional 400,000 homes and small businesses this year, including in Denver, Omaha, Neb., Phoenix, Portland, Ore., Salt Lake City, Spokane, Wash., and Springfield, Mo.
In its first quarter earnings report earlier this month, CenturyLink saw a net loss of 11,000 total broadband subscribers. For speeds of 100 Mbps and above, it added 60,000 subscribers.
Thanks to its fiber first strategy, CenturyLink has transformed itself from a traditional, legacy telco into a company that is more focused on fiber-based enterprise services and applications. CenturyLink can tap into the fiber conduit that previously belonged to firms such as Level 3, Qwest, Broadwing and WilTel, but the Level 3 deal in particular increased its fiber reach outside of its traditional U.S. footprint.
Last year, CenturyLink connected an estimated 18,00 additional buildings to its global fiber network. All told, CenturyLink has about 450,000 global route miles of fiber across its network, and it plans to add more this year.
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CenturyLink plans to expand its fiber network infrastructure in 20 additional cities this year to help national and regional enterprise businesses meet the growing demand for high-speed connectivity. CenturyLink recently expanded its fiber network across eight U.S. cities.
“We understand the importance of a secure and reliable network that delivers faster connections and the capacity enterprise companies need to keep up with increasing business demands,” said Ed Morche, president, strategic enterprise and government markets, CenturyLink, in a statement. “The network expansions and capital investments we’ve made reaffirm CenturyLink’s commitment to be the trusted connection for businesses needing a robust, secure infrastructure to unlock new opportunities presented by transformative technologies."
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Last year, CenturyLink announced it was bulking up its fiber network by adding 4.7 million miles of fiber across its inter-city networks in the U.S. and Europe. In addition to fiber-based services for consumers and businesses, as well as backhaul for 5G, CenturyLink is also using its fiber to provision 106 edge locations across its U.S. network to provide a range of low latency managed services and hybrid cloud solutions for its customers.