Lumen Adds 39,000 Fiber Customers As Legacy Losses Persist
Company pivots toward hyperscaler market with Google Cloud deal.
Jericho Casper

WASHINGTON, May 2, 2025 – Lumen Technologies added 39,000 fiber broadband customers in the first quarter of 2025, pushing its total fiber base to 1.12 million subscribers – a 17% year-over-year increase.
The fiber gains came as legacy broadband losses continued to weigh on Lumen’s overall subscriber base. The company’s total broadband base shrank to 2.51 million, down from 2.71 million a year prior, as copper-based subscriptions fell to 1.39 million from 1.75 million in Q1 2024.
Headquartered in Monroe, Louisiana, Lumen is a global telecommunications company offering a suite of services including network, cloud security, voice, and managed services. Formerly known as CenturyLink, Lumen rebranded in 2020 to reflect its focus on providing advanced technology solutions over its fiber optic networks.
Fiber now accounts for 45% of Lumen’s total broadband revenue, up from 35% a year ago. Fiber broadband generated $209 million in revenue during the quarter, compared to $257 million from legacy broadband products and $192 million from voice and ancillary services.
“As we transform, we will drive more innovation on top of our world-renowned fiber network, delivering greater value for our enterprise customers, shareholders, and employees,” CEO Kate Johnson said ahead of Thursday’s earnings call.
Lumen is deliberately winding down its legacy copper broadband services and older enterprise offerings in favor of what it calls “Grow” offerings – fiber broadband, network-as-a-service (NaaS), and flexible cloud connectivity. A key part of Lumen’s strategy involves offering direct fiber access to major cloud providers, or hyperscalers, like Google, Amazon, and Microsoft.
In Q1, Lumen announced a new partnership with Google Cloud that allows businesses to connect directly to Google’s infrastructure through Lumen’s metro fiber network. As part of the deal, Lumen is enabling direct 400 Gigabits per seconds (Gbps) fiber links from Google Cloud regions to over 50,000 customer sites.
This type of connection bypasses the public internet, reducing lag and increasing reliability, which is especially important for companies using data-heavy applications like artificial intelligence, video processing, or real-time analytics.
The company has positioned its fiber infrastructure as a foundational layer for AI and cloud services and said it’s on track to increase intercity fiber miles from 17 million to 47 million by 2028 — a nearly fourfold expansion.
Despite momentum in fiber and public sector sales, overall revenue for the quarter declined 3.3% year-over-year to $3.18 billion. Lumen reported a net loss of $201 million for the quarter, compared to net income of $57 million a year prior.