AT&T Has $6 Billion Deal To Buy CenturyLink Fiber Broadband Business (arstechnica.com) 25
AT&T is buying CenturyLink's consumer fiber broadband division for $5.75 billion, "giving the internet provider another 1.1 million fiber customers in 11 states," reports Ars Technica. "The all-cash deal is expected to close during the first half of 2026 assuming the companies obtain regulatory approval. AT&T will gain new customers in Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, and Washington." From the report: The deal will give AT&T room to grow its user base by more than the 1.1 million existing CenturyLink customers, as AT&T said the network areas being sold include over 4 million fiber-enabled locations. [...] The company, previously called CenturyLink, is officially named Lumen now but still uses the CenturyLink brand name for home Internet service. AT&T, which has 9.6 million (PDF) fiber customers and 14.1 million broadband customers overall, said the infrastructure it is purchasing will help it expand fiber construction to new locations as well.
The deal is also notable for what it doesn't include: Lumen's enterprise fiber customers and the old copper DSL lines that were never upgraded to fiber. [...] The deal seems unlikely to improve matters for CenturyLink copper users. [...] Lumen will retain the CenturyLink consumer copper broadband and voice services, but selling the consumer fiber business makes it clear that the telco isn't focused on residential customers. Lumen said that offloading consumer fiber lines will help sharpen its focus on selling services to large businesses. The company is maintaining its business fiber lines. [Ars notes that there are still nearly 1.4 million CenturyLink copper internet customers that will likely see service continue to degrade under Lumen's ownership.] "The transaction will enable AT&T to significantly expand access to AT&T Fiber in major metro areas like Denver, Las Vegas, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Orlando, Phoenix, Portland, Salt Lake City and Seattle, as well as additional geographies," AT&T said.
"AT&T will gain access to Lumen's substantial fiber construction capabilities within its incumbent local exchange carrier (ILEC) footprint and plans to accelerate the pace at which fiber is being built in these territories," AT&T said. "AT&T now expects to reach approximately 60 million total fiber locations by the end of 2030 -- "roughly doubling where AT&T Fiber is available today."
The deal is also notable for what it doesn't include: Lumen's enterprise fiber customers and the old copper DSL lines that were never upgraded to fiber. [...] The deal seems unlikely to improve matters for CenturyLink copper users. [...] Lumen will retain the CenturyLink consumer copper broadband and voice services, but selling the consumer fiber business makes it clear that the telco isn't focused on residential customers. Lumen said that offloading consumer fiber lines will help sharpen its focus on selling services to large businesses. The company is maintaining its business fiber lines. [Ars notes that there are still nearly 1.4 million CenturyLink copper internet customers that will likely see service continue to degrade under Lumen's ownership.] "The transaction will enable AT&T to significantly expand access to AT&T Fiber in major metro areas like Denver, Las Vegas, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Orlando, Phoenix, Portland, Salt Lake City and Seattle, as well as additional geographies," AT&T said.
"AT&T will gain access to Lumen's substantial fiber construction capabilities within its incumbent local exchange carrier (ILEC) footprint and plans to accelerate the pace at which fiber is being built in these territories," AT&T said. "AT&T now expects to reach approximately 60 million total fiber locations by the end of 2030 -- "roughly doubling where AT&T Fiber is available today."
Sad (Score:2)
CenturyLink customers can say goodbye to stable, reliable, uncapped cheap fiber Internet; and say hello to unreliable, expensive, metered and asymmetrical fiber internet with generally shitty service. This is a sad day for fiber Internet.
I have Brightspeed, which is fast, reliable, uncapped, and symmetrical for a reasonable (for the U.S.) price. AT&T is where Internet service goes to die. AT&T recently rolled out its fiber in my neighborhood, and I got a sales brochure from them. Their service offer
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CenturyLink customers can say goodbye to stable, reliable, uncapped cheap fiber Internet
If "Lumen" is the same as "Quantum", then since I was forced to drop my slow-but-rock-solid DSL for the quantum "upgrade" a year ago, it's been neither "stable"
nor "reliable." (And a double fuck-you for blocking *INCOMING* 25. WTF is that all about?)
And the hits just keep on comin'
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> it's been neither "stable" nor "reliable."
I was going to say the same thing. CenturyLink/Quantum's fiber service has been spotty pretty much since the beginning. Which tracks, since their DSL service wasn't much better.
AT&T may find new and interesting ways to screw things up. But Quantum residential customers have already been getting the short end of the stick for reliability.
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In rural Virginia where my parents live, their only non-wireless internet service is from Brightspeed. It's 1.2Mbps/256Kbps DSL that is offline more than it is online. And they have to pay $90/month for it...
While I am no fan of the largest shareholder, if they are in a rural area and already paying $90/month for terrible internet, Starlink would be worth a look, especially if they are on a large plot with unobstructed views of the sky. If 'Residential Lite' is available in their area it would actually be lass than what they are paying now and still delivers 50MBs most of the time.
guess I'm changing ISPs next year (Score:1)
I've been a CL fiber customer (Quantum Fiber) since I moved into my house two years ago, and it's been rock solid and inexpensive (~$40/mo for 200Mbps symmetric, which is plenty for my needs).
I don't know who I'm going to switch to, but I am morally opposed to giving either AT&T or Comcast money.
Re: guess I'm changing ISPs next year (Score:2)
Cool... (Score:2)
And AT&T's customers in California remain on 1.2 Mbps DSL...
AT&T doesn't seem to be able to create new fiber customers, only buy existing ones.
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Buying an existing ISP vs. building new infrastructure has always been cheaper, going back 20 years. It's one if the reasons you rarely saw competition in broadband markets even if another company wasn't being cock-blocked by an exclusive franchising rights agreement. Stringing lines, digging ditches, getting rights to use existing utility towers, all of it became more complicated and expensive over the last 50 years.
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All known things, just sayin', all the places where AT&T has the exclusive rights are going to be using telephone wires until the end of time. The only chance people have of getting decent broadband is to live in an area they don't currently service.
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Except in markets where they felt threatened by google fiber. Then they got their shit together.
Reject! Abort! Eject! Waveoff! (Score:2)
Warning! Use Extreme Caution! AT&T Approaches!
Reject this takeover!
Abort this takeover!
AT&T has the worst telco history in the history of telco!
Danger Ahead!
Eject! Eject! Eject!
Waveoff! Waveoff! Waveoff!
Knock it off! Knock it off! Knock it off!
Spirt AeroSystems for the telco sector (Score:4, Interesting)
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It's rather telling that the acquisition agreement came before the equity partner agree
Maybe they will figure out static IP addresses (Score:3)
CenturyLink used to offer static IP addresses first over DSL and then PPPoE over fiber, and other than the day a few years ago when they nearly killed their company when their entire network crashed for about a day because of a catastrophic failure of *in band* network control software, something that would *never* happen on a traditional reliable and trustworthy circuit switched telco architecture with a couple of notable exceptions - other than that day which no doubt the people in charge of their network architecture supremely regret - they provided generally rock solid DSL internet access and true FTTH fiber optic Internet access is some mostly newer neighborhoods as well. Anyway that catastrophic failure caused their stock price to drop by about a factor of forty, from which it has only recently started to recover, and is apparently why they decided to rename themselves Lumen as well. AFter all if you are a government, transport, utilties or financial sector customer why in the world would you continue to pay sky high government regulated rates for things as simple as T1 lines, and ATM and Frame Relay circuits if they are subject to disappearing for nearly a day - including the backup circuits - because they are all running over a lower level service with a shaky foundation?
So anyway Lumen (previously Qwest or US West in much of the western United States) created a new division or business called Quantum Fiber and replaced PPPoE within something more efficient that for some reason their network engineers have not quite (not officially anyway) figured out how to offer static IP addresses on. If you call up and ask they will say sorry we don't offer that. As someone who used to run my own mom and pop ISP twenty five years ago I find that unimaginable, especially for business customers. No one can seriously operate their own name servers or multihome their network using something like BGP (which they naturally do not offer yet either) without static IP addresses unless they tunnel their network access to someone who does - which is not at all ideal either. Rumor has it they are going to fix this problem with their fiber optic network and allow at least business customers to purchase static IP addresses again in about six months. Maybe they will even provide IPv6 service, which is something they have never done over their main broadband access network either, at least for the people that want it. Dual stacking seems unbelievably failure prone on Windows 11 for some reason.
So recently I rather needed a reliable provider with static IP addresses here so I switched to a local fiber provider called Connext that actually laid an overlay fiber network in a new neighborhood on top of the one CenturyLink put in. No BGP or IPv6, but reliable, decently performing broadband access service with IPv4 over shared fiber, no problem. I would like to have service from or through UTOPIA, which is a multi-provider Ethernet switched municipally operated broadband access network around here, but the city I live in is not a UTOPIA city, and allegedly the people who run my ISP and the UTOPIA people do not get along. Not to mention Comcast and CenturyLink, which have sued at least twice and sponsored state and federal legislation to put UTOPIA out of business, which is unfortunate when or in areas where their service is substantially worse or *much* more expensive than what you can get through a local provider using UTOPIA.
Can't be worse (Score:2)
You know, I take that back. I'd like to think they couldn't make centurylink worse, but I wouldn't bet on it.
A while ago I switched to centurylink for my ISP, and they did what I thought was impossible -- they made me miss comcast.
Wait (Score:2)
I thought that CenturyLink rebranded as Lumen years ago.
Is CenturyLink still around?
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I should mention that I am a Lumen residential fiber customer and have been since they called themselves "CenturyLink". The branding definitely moved over to Lumen. So, for me at least, it is not true that they kept the "CenturyLink" name for residential customers.
A horrible company buys a horrible company (Score:2)
CenturyLink DSL (Score:2)