CenturyLink, Inc. profile and corporate video
CenturyLink, Inc. is an integrated communications company. The company provides an array of communications services to its residential, business, governmental and wholesale customers. Its services include long-distance, network access, private line, public access, broadband, data, manageable hosting, collocation, wireless and video services. The company also provides local access and fiber transport services to local exchange carriers and security monitoring services in certain local and regional markets. The company manages its operations through four operating segments: Regional markets, Business markets, and Wholesale markets and Savvis operations. The Regional markets segment provides strategic and legacy products and services to residential consumers, small to medium-sized businesses and regional enterprise customers. This segment products and services include private line, broadband, Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS), hosting, video and wireless services. Its legacy services offered to these customers include local and long-distance services. The Business markets segment provides services to enterprise and government customers. The Wholesale markets segment provides its services to other communications providers. Its services include unbundled network elements which allow the company’s customers the use of its network to provide voice and data services to their customers. The Savvis operations segment provides hosting and network services to business customers. The company was founded in 1930 and is headquartered in Monroe, LA.“
CenturyLink’s history
The earliest predecessor of CenturyLink was the Oak Ridge Telephone Company in Oak Ridge, Louisiana, which was owned by F. E. Hogan, Sr.
In 1930, Hogan sold the company, to William Clarke and Marie Williams, for $500.
In 1946, the Williams’ son, Clarke McRae Williams, received ownership of the family’s telephone company as a wedding gift. he company remained as a family-operated business until it became incorporated as Central Telephone and Electronics in 1967.
In 1971, the company was renamed as Century Telephone Enterprises, Inc.
In 1972, Century Telephone acquired the La Crosse Telephone Corporation, of Wisconsin.
In 1989, Century Telephone Enterprises acquired Universal Telephone, Inc.
In 1992, Century Telephone acquired Central Telephone Company of Ohio, a Centel subsidiary.
In 1997, Century Telephone acquired Delta Security Alarm Co., Inc. and its largest acquisition up until that time, Pacific Telecom, Inc. Pacific Telecom was later renamed as CenturyTel of the Northwest, Inc.
In 1998, the company acquired the security company Century Protection Systems.
In 1999, the company was renamed as CenturyTel, Inc.
In 2001, CenturyTel acquired CSW Net, Inc.
In 2003, CenturyTel acquired half ownership of SkyComm International, Inc. In June, CenturyTel also acquired the fiber network of Digital Teleport, Inc.,
In December 2003, CenturyTel acquired the Midwest Fiber Optic Network (MFON) from Level 3 Communications, Inc.
In 2004, it partnered with EchoStar Communications Corporation for DISH Network multi-channel digital TV.
On July 1, 2009 Embarq, one of the largest independent local exchange carriers in the United States, was acquired by CenturyTel, Inc. The deal made CenturyTel the third-largest landline phone provider in Pennsylvania behind Verizon and Comcast.
On May 2010, the new corporate name of the combined CenturyTel/Embarq entity became CenturyLink, Inc.
On April 1, 2011, CenturyLink acquired Qwest Communications International, Inc., one of the largest United States telecommunications carriers, in a stock-for-stock transaction. The merger made CenturyLink owner of one of „Baby Bells: Qwest included what was once US West, a Baby Bell company break up from the Bell System in 1984.
The Bell System was the system of companies, led by the Bell Telephone Company and later by AT&T, that dominated the telephone services industry in North America for 100 years from its creation in 1877.
On July 15, 2011, CenturyLink acquired Savvis, Inc., a global provider of cloud infrastructure and hosted IT services.
On October 16, 2012 Savvis acquired ITO Business Division of Ciber thereby adding managed services to the portfolio.
On November 19, 2013, CenturyLink announced the acquisition of Tier 3, a Seattle-based infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform, and advanced cloud management company.
On December 8, 2014, the company announced the acquisition of DataGardens, Inc., a Disaster Recovery as-a-Service (DRaaS) provider.
On December 11, 2014, the company announced the acquisition of Cognilytics, a predictive analytics and big data service provider.
On March 30, 2016, the company announced the acquisition of netAura, a security services company that focuses on cybersecurity, security information and event management (SIEM), analytics, and vulnerability management.
On January 9, 2017, CenturyLink announced the acquisition of Edison, New Jersey-based SEAL Consulting, a leading SAP services provider.
On November 1, 2017, CenturyLink acquired Level 3 Communications in a deal valued at around $25 billion.
On September 10, 2019, CenturyLink announced the acquisition of Streamroot, a provider of disruptive technology to improve video and static content delivery within bandwidth constrained areas.
On September 14, 2020, CenturyLink, Inc announced that it had changed its name to Lumen Technologies, Inc. The CenturyLink brand will continue to be the customer-facing brand for traditional copper-based services. Fiber-based products and services will use the brand Quantum Fiber.
*Information from Forbes.com and Wikipedia.org.
**Video published on YouTube by “CenturyLink“