In our blog postings, it seems that only a few telecom giants are always making the news headlines. This includes the likes of Verizon, AT&T, Comcast, Windstream Communications, etc. Now, however, it looks as if there is a new emerging superstar in this industry. This rising star is a business entity known as CenturyLink. The company is currently headquartered in Monroe, LA, and provides services to an entire gamut of industries, which includes wholesale customers, the government sector, the Fortune 500 business sector, and all sorts of residential customers.
CenturyLink has a customer base across thirty six states, and in fact, is ranked third in terms of company size (47,000 employees) right behind AT&T and Verizon. It was actually founded way back in 1968, and has achieved revenues and profits of $18 billion and $2.7 billion, respectively.
Their service offerings are available in four different sectors:
- Bundled Services. This includes picking a la carte such items as high speed internet, home phone services, and DIRECTV.
- Home Security. This is a unique and specialized offering when compared to the other telecom vendors. This is called the ‘CenturyLink Smart Home,’ and has such features as remote video monitoring, temperature management, electronic door locks, lighting control, and even a touch screen control panel which is compatible to any tablet or wireless device (such as the iPad or the iPhone).
In order to further grow these offerings and its customer base, CenturyLink, just last week, accepted a $500 million investment from the FCC’s Connect America Fund (also known as the CAF-II). With this extra infusion of cash, the company plans to extend its Internet and broadband services to 1.2 million brand new residential customers.
According to John Jones, a Vice President at CenturyLink, “Connect America Fund, along with our significant capital investments over the years, help make deploying rural broadband more cost effective.” (SOURCE: https://www.fiercetelecom.com/telecom/centurylink-accepts-500m-caf-ii-funds-plans-to-extend-broadband-to-1-2m-rural-households),
Other telecom vendors have also received grants and funding from the CAF-II source, such as FairPoint, Frontier, and Windstream Communications.
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