Lumen Technologies
Lumen Technologies, Inc. (formerly CenturyLink and Qwest) is an American telecommunications company headquartered in Monroe, Louisiana, that offers communications, network services, security, cloud solutions, voice, and managed services. The company is a member of the Fortune 500[3] and has been on the S&P 500 index since 1999.[4]
Formerly
- Central Telephone and Electronics, Inc.
- Century Telephone Enterprises, Inc.
- CenturyTel, Inc.
- CenturyLink, Inc.
1930
Monroe, Louisiana, U.S.
Worldwide
Kate Johnson (CEO)
Network, Cloud Security, Voice, Managed Services, Big Data as a Services, Multi-Cloud Management, Private Cloud, Public Cloud, SaaS Apps, Cloud Connect, Internet, Phone, TV
US$17.48 billion (2022)
US$95 million (2022)
US$−1.55 billion (2022)
US$45.58 billion (2022)
US$10.44 billion (2022)
c. 29,000 (December 2022)
Its communications services have included local and long-distance voice, broadband, Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS), private line (including special access), Ethernet, hosting (including cloud hosting and managed hosting), data integration, video, network, public access, Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), information technology, and other ancillary services.[5]
Lumen also serves global enterprise customers across North America, Latin America, and Asia Pacific.[6] It previously served the Europe, Middle East, and Africa enterprise markets, until the Lumen EMEA subsidiary was acquired by UK-based Colt Technology Services in November 2023 for $1.8b USD.[7]
Outages and other technical issues[edit]
The Federal Communications Commission ordered CenturyLink to pay a record $16 million for failing to alert authorities of a preventable programming error that left nearly 11 million people in seven states without access to emergency services for six hours in 2014.[112][113]
In December 2018, CenturyLink faced criticism for requiring residential customers in Utah to, via DNS hijacking, view and acknowledge a notice advertising its security and parental control software, before they could connect to the internet again. The provider claimed that this was required by a recently enacted state law, which requires all ISPs to inform users that they provide "the ability to block material harmful to minors". Bill sponsor and Utah State Senate member Todd Weiler stated that the law did not require that service be disrupted until the notice is acknowledged; the law only requires that this notice be delivered in a "conspicuous" manner (such as an advertisement within a bill or invoice) and does not require disruption of service.[114]
On December 27, 2018, a "nationwide outage" caused 9-1-1 service to be disrupted across the country. The Federal Communications Commission says it will investigate.[115][116] In some areas the outage lasted nearly twelve hours and was the third shutdown of the year following outages in April and November 2018. ATM and point of sale credit card machines were also widely affected.[117]
On January 8, 2020, CenturyLink was required to pay $8.9 million to customers in Minnesota in a settlement regarding over-billing. In addition to the payment, CenturyLink is required to reform billing practices and submit audits to the Minnesota Attorney General's office.[118] According to reports, CenturyLink disagreed with the charges, but settled to avoid litigation costs.[119]
On August 30, 2020, CenturyLink suffered a major technical outage due to misconfiguration in one of the company's data centers. The outage impacted tech giants such as Cloudflare, Amazon, Twitter, Xbox Live and many more. Reports indicate that all services were restored by 11:12 am ET.[120][121]
On March 9, 2024, connectivity services maintained by Lumen were disrupted affecting AmTote, a company that provides totalisator services used to control parimutuel betting for horse racing. The disruptions rendered several thoroughbred racetracks across the United States unable to process bets, and forced Tampa Bay Downs to run their signature horse race, the Tampa Bay Derby, as a non-wagering event.[122][123]