What Is Centurylink Internet And Voice Services

CenturyLink is an integrated telecommunications company that provides a wide variety of products and services to clients across the globe, including networking, deject service and security solutions. CenturyLink is the third largest telecommunication provider in the Usa, behind AT&T and Verizon.

Products and services

CenturyLink's offerings fall under three master categories: Enterprise, Small Business organisation and Residential. Products and services in each of the three tiers can be purchased in either bundles or individually. The bundles can exist purchased preconfigured or customized.

Residential options offered include local and long-distance telephone service, fiber optic cyberspace, direct circulate satellite television set with DirecTV and a moving service that helps residential customers seamlessly transfer and activate their CenturyLink services at their new domicile. Additionally, the company offers dwelling house security services.

Residential customers are offered a toll-for-life plan for internet service, meaning a customer's initial program remains the aforementioned toll as long as they go on the programme.

Small business services include business versions of CenturyLink's voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) telephone, Cobweb+ Internet and Television services. The company likewise offers cloud applications at the modest business level.

At the enterprise level, offerings expand to include the following:

networking services, such as software-defined networking (SDN), IP virtual private network (VPN), fiber, Ethernet and wavelength services;
security services for the deject, distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) assault prevention, and analytics and threat management;
managed services application, operating system (OS) and infrastructure management;
deject services for public, hybrid, multi- and private cloud management, every bit well as big data analytics and disaster recovery (DR);
vocalization and unified communications (UC) services, similar hosted VoIP and online video and web conferencing platforms; and
Information technology consulting services for cybersecurity and infrastructure design and transition.

CenturyLink also promises 24/7 customer service to all residential, small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and global enterprise customers.

The company also places a strong emphasis on the loftier-speed connectivity -- up to 940 megabits per 2nd (Mbps) -- of its fiber network, especially for residential and small business customers. All the same, information technology is of import to know that this only applies to select locations.

CenturyLink is currently available in 36 states beyond the state. Out of those 36, only select cities in some states take access to the company'southward gigabit (Gb) cobweb network. In areas without the network, users are offered CenturyLink's digital subscriber line (DSL) service, which achieves advertised speeds 80% to 95% of the time, according to Federal Communications Committee (FCC) data. Users can check the internet speed and availability of the net service coverage in their city by inbound their accost on the CenturyLink site and looking at the site's national availability map.

Competitors

Some of CenturyLink'due south notable competitors are AT&T, Comcast and Verizon. I notable advantage that CenturyLink has over these companies is its reputation every bit a legacy company with well-established infrastructure spanning a large portion of the primal The states. It besides offers better value pricing for gigabit internet than some competitors, such equally Comcast, also as lower starting prices for net.

However, CenturyLink has been reported to have less than optimal customer service by some review sites and a series of astringent network outages in the past decade -- one of which was dubbed among the worst in U.S. history past the FCC -- put CenturyLink's reputation in jeopardy and, therefore, gives an advantage to its elevation opponents.

Other areas in which CenturyLink ranks lower than some competitors are the internet speeds it offers -- for example, Comcast is faster -- and its overall lack of Wi-Fi hotspots.

Future of CenturyLink

Some speculators predict that the introduction of 5G could mean trouble for CenturyLink in the near future, in part because it would mean a further decline in consumer interest in telephone line and cablevision Television services -- ii staples of CenturyLink's business model. While CenturyLink'south fiber optic network is a necessary function of implementing 5G and may show an asset for it, the company may end up beingness caused by a competitor that is more capable of adapting to the migration to 5G and is less involved in waning tech trends, similar cable Idiot box. The visitor can also be expected to proceed investing in edge computing and cloud services in the futurity.

Despite the uncertainty of CenturyLink'southward future in providing for residential customers based on its ability to arrange to changes in technology, several important authorities contracts were awarded to CenturyLink in 2019 and 2020 that help secure a role for the company in the futurity telecommunications landscape.

History of CenturyLink

CenturyLink was founded in 1930 in Oak Ridge, Louisiana. At the time, information technology was named Oak Ridge Telephone Visitor.

In 1971, the company was renamed Century Telephone Enterprises Inc. The following yr, it acquired La Crosse Telephone Corporation, which initiated a multidecade period of substantial growth for the visitor, largely due to a series of similar acquisitions.

In 2003, the company made the dual acquisitions of Digital Teleport and Level 3 Communications -- including their respective fiber networks -- and these are now some of CenturyLink's chief avails. In 2005, the visitor began a wireless vox and data service and bought more than fiber networks in the central United states.

The company obtained Embarq Corporation in 2009 and inverse its name to CenturyLink, which became official in 2010. Information technology caused Qwest Communications in April 2011, which boosted the company to its No. iii national ranking. The visitor also acquired Savvis in 2011, marking the get-go of its involvement in the deject calculating marketplace.

Several notable service outages have besides occurred in the terminal decade, bringing CenturyLink's customer service and overall reputation into question for many customers.

In tardily 2018, for example, CenturyLink experienced a 37-hour nationwide outage that impacted nearly 22 million customers in 39 states and kept nearly 900 calls to 911 from existence connected, according to a report the FCC released in 2019. The FCC dubbed it i of the worst network outages in U.South. history.

In 2019, CenturyLink was awarded a contract to provide core networking services to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

In 2020, CenturyLink was awarded a chore order to provide the U.S. Department of Defense Education Activeness (DoDEA) with secure connectivity, as well as a $1.half dozen billion contract with the U.Due south. Department of the Interior (DOI). DoDEA is a federally operated schoolhouse system that serves the children of active duty military members and Department of Defense (DOD) families.

This was last updated in January 2020

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