CenturyLink Broadband Roadmap: Funding Shifting From the Cloud

CenturyLink has set a goal of bringing broadband service supporting speeds of at least 40 Mbps to 50% of its base by the end of 2018, said Tony Davis, head of investor relations for CenturyLink. Although CenturyLink has done some fiber-to-the-home deployments to support speeds as high as 1 Gbps, CenturyLink broadband plans will rely largely on upgrading existing copper loops using a mixture of bonding and vectoring, depending on a customer’s distance from a fiber connection. The company also expects to use G.fast technology to serve multi-dwelling units. Meeting its goals will require CenturyLink to spend a higher percentage of its budget on the network than in the past. To free up the funding, the company expects to take a “capital-light” approach toward investment in the cloud, IT services and managed hosting, Davis said. The company also is looking at selling some of its data centers – an increasingly common move among the larger telcos – but if it were to do so, it would lease space from the new owner to support its existing hosting business, according to Davis.