Lumen Technologies, Inc.

What does Lumen own?
Lumen owns a national intercity fiber backbone, enterprise network and edge services, the NaaS platform, and residual copper mass-market operations. It sold its Quantum Fiber consumer business to AT&T in February 2026.

Is Lumen publicly traded?
Yes. It trades on the New York Stock Exchange under ticker LUMN.

What happened to CenturyLink?
CenturyLink renamed itself Lumen Technologies in 2020; the Lumen brand absorbed the company entirely, with CenturyLink and Level 3 retired as customer-facing names.

Did AT&T buy Lumen?
No. AT&T bought only Lumen's mass-market fiber-to-the-home business for $5.75 billion, completed February 2, 2026. Lumen remains an independent company.

Who is the CEO of Lumen?
Kate Johnson, president and CEO since November 2022, formerly a senior Microsoft executive.

How much revenue does Lumen generate?
$12.4 billion in FY2025, with Q4 adjusted EBITDA of $767 million at a 25.2 percent margin.

Where is Lumen headquartered?
Monroe, Louisiana, USA.

The company began in 1968 as Century Telephone Enterprises, a Louisiana rural phone company built under the Williams family that became CenturyTel, a consolidator of small-market carriers across the South and Midwest.

Transformative acquisitions made it a national player: Embarq in 2009, Qwest Communications in 2011, and the $34 billion Level 3 merger in 2017 that added one of the world's largest internet backbone networks. The company renamed itself CenturyLink in 2010, then Lumen Technologies in 2020, positioning the Lumen name around edge and fiber rather than legacy copper.

The 2010s and early 2020s were a debt-laden decline: revenue shrank for years as copper lines died faster than fiber grew, and the company sold its Latin American and 20-state copper assets, the latter becoming Brightspeed in 2022.

Kate Johnson, recruited from Microsoft in late 2022, led the refocus on enterprise AI infrastructure, striking multi-billion-dollar Private Connectivity Fabric deals with cloud and AI customers before the 2026 AT&T divestiture completed the pivot.

The company publishes ESG reporting on network energy efficiency, fiber's lower power-per-bit advantage, and workforce metrics for its field and data-center operations.

Debt distress history: Lumen's multi-year decline produced a 2024 debt restructuring and persistent solvency skepticism, largely resolved by the AT&T proceeds.

RDOF giveback: A one-time giveback of FCC Rural Digital Opportunity Fund support in Q2 2025 drew regulatory attention to rural buildout commitments.