Is Lumen Centurylink?
Lumen Technologies or Lumen for short was formerly known as CenturyLink until September 2020. Therefore, Lumen is the new name and brand of the company formerly operating under the name and brand of CenturyLink.
Origin of CenturyLink Brand
In Louisiana, CenturyLink was first founded as a regional phone company in the middle of the 1930s. Over the years, the corporation evolved into a fiber optic network functioning nationally by integrating phone carriers, long-distance providers, Internet service providers, and data networking companies.
The firm changed its name to CenturyLink and amalgamated with Embarq, a Sprint wireline spin-off in 2009. Consequently, CenturyLink emerged as the third-largest telecoms business in the US at the time of the merger. The name CenturyLink was selected to show dependability and customer-oriented commitment across millennia.
Following ten years, CenturyLink acquired additional regional fiber networks, Level 3 Communications in 2017, and Qwest Communications in 2011 among other more significant purchases. This created a lot of debt even as CenturyLink became one of the biggest worldwide network providers.
Why was Lumen Technologies Rebranded?
In mid-2020, the company said that it would divest from its slowing traditional voice and DSL residential phone and broadband internet services businesses to focus on future-proof fiber-optic network services for enterprise business clients.
This was an indication of the company’s new strategic direction and new name and logo – Lumen Technologies or Lumen for short – for CenturyLink. The name Lumen is intended to reflect the company’s faster, brighter fiber network for data and applications.
Another aspect that has shifted is the color that has been used to represent the company from CenturyLink green and blue to Lumen purple and red. As for the change in the logo design, the geometrical CenturyLink logo transformed into a more fluid and luminous image of Lumen.
What Services does Lumen offer?
As a large global telecommunications company, Lumen offers networking products and services focused on two key areas.
Enterprise Business Services
For medium to large enterprise businesses globally, Lumen offers solutions in managed voice, data, networking, cloud infrastructure, security, and other IT offerings through its fiber-optic connectivity that stretches across 60 countries. This includes managed hybrid public and private cloud services and edge computing for real-time data processing closer to the edge devices.
Mass Market Services
Lumen targets residential and small business clients mainly in the southern and western areas of the United States, providing internet service, digital subscriber lines (DSL), voice-over-internet protocol, streaming video, and managed services. However, it has been gradually losing most of its rural landline and DSL customers to cable rivals in the recent past.
To concentrate more on enterprise services and emerging technologies such as 5G and fiber access, Lumen has been selling many of the copper-line businesses it had in rural areas of 16 states.
Is CenturyLink Still a Brand?
No, after the rebranding that took place in September 2020, the company no longer goes by the name CenturyLink. Lumen Technologies is the new corporate brand, name, and persona of the business enterprise.
However, as consumers get used to the renaming, people still use the old CenturyLink name frequently while addressing the Lumen company. Users can also search for ‘CenturyLink’ to get to Lumen’s website with the same URL as before, lumen. com. And many legal, regulatory filings and financial documents include CenturyLink's old legal entity names.
While the term CenturyLink may not exist in today’s world, the name remains in the public and business domain through its usage and corporate records. I think the CenturyLink brand was renamed, subsumed into, and transformed by Lumen. However, it is still the same basic underlying telecommunications company in a way.
The Future of Lumen
In the future perspectives, Lumen considers fiber as the basis for the development of the new generation of mobile networks, cloud solutions, Telemedia, and other high-bandwidth applications. Lumen’s CEO has stated that the firm’s fiber infrastructure has it ready to “serve the digital economy now and for the next decades” as an increasing data economy emerges in the business and consumer realms.
One thing is for certain however – no matter what Lumen may evolve into in the future as a result of continuous technological and social evolution, one thing is certain: at its core, this distinguished communications provider is dedicated to helping people progress through connection. As it transformed from a small regional telephone company in the 1930s to an international digital giant like Lumen today, it will keep on changing to provide networked solutions for the generations to come.