Lumen Applied sciences, the successor of Qwest Communications Worldwide and proprietor of CenturyLink, has reached an settlement to promote its client fiber enterprise, referred to as Quantum Fiber, to AT&T for $5.75 billion in money, the 2 corporations introduced Wednesday.
AT&T will receive accounts for almost 1 million fiber subscribers throughout greater than 4 million places with Quantum Fiber in 11 states, and plans to switch them to its AT&T Fiber community after the deal is accomplished within the first half of 2026.
Lumen has been actively increasing its high-speed Quantum Fiber community to extra properties in metro Denver, switching over CenturyLink’s fiber and copper telephone and DSL clients when it reaches them.
AT&T Fiber will achieve better entry to residential and small-business clients in Denver, Las Vegas, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Orlando, Phoenix, Portland, Salt Lake Metropolis and Seattle, whereas Lumen pays down debt and dedicate extra assets to its spine fiber community and to giant knowledge customers.
“We’re sharpening our deal with enterprise clients, and this transaction enhances our monetary flexibility, enabling us to reimagine networking for enterprises in a multi-cloud, AI-first world,” stated Kate Johnson, president and CEO of Lumen in a information launch.
Lumen Applied sciences is predicated in Monroe, La., the house of CenturyLink, a legacy telephone service supplier. However the firm maintains a big worker presence in Denver, which is the place its fiber community originated through Qwest and Broomfield-based Degree 3 Communications.
Lumen stated it plans to make use of $4.2 billion from the sale and money readily available to pay down $4.8 billion in debt, lowering its curiosity bills by $300 million a yr. The sale frees up $1 billion a yr that Lumen was spending to construct its mass market fiber community, however will value the corporate $750 million a yr in revenues.
The acquisition represents a small-scale coming full circle of kinds. AT&T spun off Mountain Bell and different “child bells” in 1984 due to antitrust considerations. The rebranded US West merged with Qwest, a pioneering fiber optic community supplier, in 2000 in a $44 billion inventory deal. CenturyLink bought Qwest for $22.4 billion in 2011. It added Degree 3 Communications, one other broadband supplier, in a money and inventory deal valued at $34 billion in 2017.
AT&T will quickly achieve the “last-mile” communications community and residential clients — a number of acquisitions and technological improvements eliminated — that descended from one of many child bells it was pressured to place up for adoption 4 a long time in the past.
“We’re main the race to attach extra People with fiber, the perfect broadband connectivity expertise accessible,” stated John Stankey, AT&T’s chairman and CEO stated in a information launch. “This cope with Lumen represents a major funding in U.S. connectivity infrastructure that may create jobs and spur financial exercise in quite a few areas and main metro areas throughout 11 states.”
Stankey stated AT&T Fiber plans to double its community by the tip of 2030. If that’s the case, extra properties and companies throughout the state may obtain direct fiber entry. Greater than a dozen fiber-to-the-home suppliers are lively in Colorado, the most important being Quantum Fiber. However they cowl solely about half the state, in response to the web site Finest Neighborhoods.
Quantum Fiber has full or near-full protection in lots of Denver neighborhoods. However its attain is spottier within the outer suburbs, different elements of the Entrance Vary and alongside the I-70 hall. It’s largely absent in rural areas.