Lumen Technologies, the successor of Qwest Communications International and owner of CenturyLink, has reached an agreement to sell its consumer fiber business, called Quantum Fiber, to AT&T for $5.75 billion in cash, the two companies announced Wednesday.
AT&T will obtain accounts for nearly 1 million fiber subscribers across more than 4 million locations with Quantum Fiber in 11 states, and plans to transfer them to its AT&T Fiber network after the deal is completed in the first half of 2026.
Lumen has been actively expanding its high-speed Quantum Fiber network to more homes in metro Denver, switching over CenturyLink’s fiber and copper phone and DSL customers when it reaches them.
AT&T Fiber will gain greater access to residential and small-business customers in Denver, Las Vegas, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Orlando, Phoenix, Portland, Salt Lake City and Seattle, while Lumen will pay down debt and devote more resources to its backbone fiber network and to large data users.
“We are sharpening our focus on enterprise customers, and this transaction enhances our financial flexibility, enabling us to reimagine networking for enterprises in a multi-cloud, AI-first world,” said Kate Johnson, president and CEO of Lumen in a news release.
Lumen Technologies is based in Monroe, La., the home of CenturyLink, a legacy phone service provider. But the company maintains a large employee presence in Denver, which is where its fiber network originated via Qwest and Broomfield-based Level 3 Communications.
Lumen said it plans to use $4.2 billion from the sale and cash on hand to pay down $4.8 billion in debt, reducing its interest expenses by $300 million a year. The sale frees up $1 billion a year that Lumen was spending to build its mass market fiber network, but will cost the company $750 million a year in revenues.
The purchase represents a small-scale coming full circle of sorts. AT&T spun off Mountain Bell and other “baby bells” in 1984 because of antitrust concerns. The rebranded US West merged with Qwest, a pioneering fiber optic network provider, in 2000 in a $44 billion stock deal. CenturyLink purchased Qwest for $22.4 billion in 2011. It added Level 3 Communications, another broadband provider, in a cash and stock deal valued at $34 billion in 2017.
AT&T will soon gain the “last-mile” communications network and residential customers — several acquisitions and technological innovations removed — that descended from one of the baby bells it was forced to put up for adoption four decades ago.
“We’re leading the race to connect more Americans with fiber, the best broadband connectivity technology available,” said John Stankey, AT&T’s chairman and CEO said in a news release. “This deal with Lumen represents a significant investment in U.S. connectivity infrastructure that will create jobs and spur economic activity in numerous regions and major metro areas across 11 states.”
Stankey said AT&T Fiber plans to double its network by the end of 2030. If so, more homes and businesses across the state could receive direct fiber access. More than a dozen fiber-to-the-home providers are active in Colorado, the largest being Quantum Fiber. But they cover only about half the state, according to the website Best Neighborhoods.
Quantum Fiber has full or near-full coverage in many Denver neighborhoods. But its reach is spottier in the outer suburbs, other parts of the Front Range and along the I-70 corridor. It is largely absent in rural areas.
