Sep. 10—LIMA — Lumen/CenturyLink announced the selling of parts of their local fibre and copper network, including consumer, small business, wholesale and enterprise businesses and assets. The sale will be to a new company that will operate under the brand name. We committed to delivering a customer experience that makes staying connected simple and easy.

Currently Centurylink Speed Test provides fibre and DSL internet service to 35 states, including much of the greater Lima area in west central and northwest Ohio.

On or after Oct. 3, 2022, current service on impacted accounts will be operated by Brightspeed. Though your bill will look different, your existing products, services, rates, terms and conditions will remain the same.

On or after Oct. 3, a new portal will be used to view and manage services moving to Brightspeed. Managing users, viewing bills, creating repair tickets and receiving notifications will be done using the new Brightspeed portal. Brightspeed will be reaching out soon with more details.

Lumen/CenturyLink has been working hard with the Brightspeed team to make sure customers continue to receive the same level of service they have come to expect from Lumen/CenturyLink.

Both companies have dedicated support teams to ensure a smooth transition across every touchpoint. Our primary goal is to make sure customer needs are addressed in ways that make the most sense.

CenturyLink home internet service is available in 37 states. The company tells CNET that fibre plans are available at roughly 50% of serviceable addresses.

You can find CenturyLink home internet service in 36 states across the US.

Alabama Kansas New Mexico Texas Arkansas Louisiana North Carolina Utah Arizona Michigan North Dakota Virginia Colorado Minnesota Ohio Washington Florida Mississippi Oklahoma Wisconsin Georgia Missouri Oregon Wyoming Idaho Montana Pennsylvania Illinois Nebraska South Carolina Indiana Nevada South Dakota Iowa New Jersey Tennessee

According to a spokesperson for Lumen, "Fibre is currently available in about 50% of our footprint, including Denver, Portland, Salt Lake City, Seattle and Springfield, Missouri," with additional cities planned throughout 2022. That list includes Las Vegas, Omaha, Orlando and Phoenix, among others.

CenturyLink home internet plans and prices

CenturyLink currently offers DSL internet plans, with speeds up to 140 megabits per second or a 100% fibre network featuring two available plans. A Lumen spokesperson told CNET that the company is continuing to invest and expand its fibre footprint, so it will continue to unveil its Quantum Fibre internet to new markets this year.

CenturyLink plans and pricing Plan Max speeds Monthly cost Equipment fees Data cap Price for Life 20 20Mbps download, 2Mbps upload $50 $15 for modem/router rental (optional) None Price for Life 40 40Mbps download, 3Mbps upload $50 $15 for modem/router rental (optional) None Price for Life 60 60Mbps download, 5Mbps upload $50 $15 for modem/router rental (optional) None Price for Life 80 80Mbps download, 10Mbps upload $50 $15 for modem/router rental (optional) None Price for Life 100 100Mbps download, 12Mbps upload $50 $15 for modem/router rental (optional) None Quantum Fiber 200 200Mbps download, 200Mbps upload $50 $15 for modem/router rental (optional) None Quantum Fiber Gigabit 940Mbps download, 940Mbps upload $65 $15 for modem/router rental (optional) None.

Century Link offers just a handful of the above plans for many of its available addresses. In a few areas, you may have only one choice. That's unusual among ISPs, who offer three to five different plan options at most addresses.

As to the value of the plans offered by CenturyLink, the average cost per Mbps for the DSL plans is $1, which is a highly competitive rate for that particular connection type. By comparison, the average price per Mbps of the DSL plans offered by AT&T, Frontier and Verizon is $2.44. I should note that I'm comparing the regular rates, not promo costs, because CenturyLink doesn't do promo pricing. The price you get at the start is the price you'll have after your first year.

On the fibre side, the average cost per Mbps of the Fibre Gigabit plan is 7 cents, which is significantly less expensive than the cable gigabit offerings from Spectrum, Comcast and Cox (all between 12 and 14 cents) and the gigabit fibre plans from AT&T, Frontier and Verizon, which all hover around 9 cents.

As it currently stands, CenturyLink's fibre plans are some of the best values you'll find on home internet.

Fibre speeds are fast, but DSL, not so much

If Quantum Fibre plans are available in your area, CenturyLink's internet service is plenty fast. You'll find symmetrical download and upload speeds, which means better performance for work (no glitchy Zoom calls or frozen FaceTime frames) and play (less lag during online gaming and no issues streaming Stranger Things in 4K).

That's the good news. The not-so-good news is that CenturyLink fibre isn't available at every address in the footprint. Service is only available via DSL in many regions, which lags well behind fibre and cable speeds and performance.

For example, if you head to the speed-testing website Ookla, you'll find a Speedtest Intelligence metric that tracks the fastest ISPs based on median download speeds. Its most recent scores, taken during the second quarter of 2022, list CenturyLink in seventh place behind Cox, Xfinity, Spectrum, Verizon, AT & T Internet and Frontier. That might not seem bad, but the six providers above it averaged approximately 170Mbps. CenturyLink rang in with a paltry 41Mbps, in comparison.

The gap isn't quite so vast when you turn to Centurylink Consistency Score, which looks at how often a provider delivers broadband speeds to its customers. While CenturyLink again came in seventh place, it notched a 58% score to the other six's average of 86%. Similarly, not stellar, but not as stark a difference as the previous comparison.

Lastly, according to the FCC's most recent, January 2021, report on fixed broadband performance, roughly 40% of CenturyLink customers experienced download speeds greater than 95% of the advertised speed, while another 40% or so reported speeds that fell between 80 and 95% of the advertised number. That leaves over 20% of the customer base reporting speeds less than 80% as fast as advertised.