Lumen Plans Fiber Deployment Rate of 5 Times its Historical Rate

Lumen plans to increase locations reached by fiber from the current 2.5 million to 12 million, representing a five-times increase over the company’s traditional deployment rate according to President and CEO Jeff Storey. Those deployments target the 16 states that Lumen will retain after plans to sell its local exchange business in 20 states to Apollo Funds are completed. That transaction is expected to close in the second half of 2022. More than two-thirds of the markets that Lumen will retain (70 percent) are in metro areas, where the company is targeting a deployment cost below $1,000 per location. Like other broadband providers that have relied, in large part, on traditional copper network infrastructure, Lumen has been losing broadband customers in recent years. The company hopes that its investment in fiber will reverse that trend and has set a goal of returning to revenue growth within two to three years. “Fiber wins,” Storey said. “If you are competing with any other technology, fiber wins.”