- AT&T is currently integrating 1.1 million former Lumen/CenturyLink fiber subscribers into AT&T
- Once all former Lumen/CenturyLink customers have been converted to the AT&T Fiber brand, AT&T plans to increase its fiber penetration in these markets
- In the meantime, the Lumen assets are weighing on fiber broadband ARPU
During its recent Q2 2026 earnings call, AT&T CEO John Stankey said the company has spent the past six months standing up operations to integrate former Lumen Technologies/CenturyLink fiber customers under the AT&T Fiber brand.
AT&T completed its acquisition of Lumen's mass-market fiber business in February, 2026, adding 1.1 million former Lumen/CenturyLink fiber subscribers and more than 4 million fiber locations passed, across 11 states.
Although Stankey indicated that AT&T is working hard to integrate these new customers, there doesn’t appear to be any consistent branding, yet. Some fiber customers still receive bills from CenturyLink. Others receive bills from Lumen’s former brand Quantum Fiber. Meanwhile, AT&T has a website that says, “Quantum Fiber is now part of the AT&T family.”
Ultimately, AT&T will want all its consumer fiber broadband customers on the AT&T Fiber brand. But at this point, former Lumen/CenturyLink customers may not know who to contact if they have a problem with their broadband.
Fierce Network reached out to AT&T, asking for its roadmap to integrate Lumen’s customers, and we’ll update this story if we hear back.
On the earnings call Stankey said, “We're converting market by market, and we're pretty much getting to the back end of that now. What we're effectively doing right now is converting all the infrastructure, all the branding, all the support systems that we have with customers, all the methodologies that technicians use when they show up in a house, all the CPE that a customer gets that provides that world-class Wi-Fi that we put in place inside of a home that makes that high-bandwidth connectivity actually sing.”
He said once all former Lumen/CenturyLink customers have been converted to the AT&T Fiber brand, “then we can go in and really start to put a little more gasoline on the fire and start to drive those volumes up, and we're getting to that moment now where you're going to see us begin to lean into it.”
AT&T plans to have its salespeople push hard to increase fiber penetrations in the former Lumen footprint, and Stankey said its sales rates in those areas are already improving.
“This will be our largest year ever for fiber expansion with plans to reach 8 million new locations, including over 4 million locations acquired from Lumen,” he said.
After AT&T’s Q2 earnings report, New Street Research analyst David Barden noted that AT&T’s reported fiber average revenue per user (ARPU) was down 1.3% compared to the same quarter last year. “This raised some eyebrows among investors as ARPU expectations missed by a lot,” wrote Barden. “Some of the miss can be explained by the inclusion of revenue from the acquired Lumen fiber subscribers. Lumen’s fiber ARPU is lower than AT&T, which led to lower reported ARPU growth in the last two quarters.”
The company also expects its costs to increase in the second half of 2026 on the back of integrating and scaling Lumen’s footprint, according to analyst Jonathan Atkin with RBC Capital Markets.
“The company increasingly wants fiber — not wireless — to be the anchor product that brings customers into AT&T, with wireless added afterward,” said Atkin. “Management believes roughly 80% of households prefer a converged provider, but many abandon the buying process because bundled offers are too complicated, leading AT&T to simplify pricing and packaging.”
AT&T’s ultimate goal is to reach 60 million fiber passings via the Lumen integration and its own network builds.
Forged Fiber 37
In February when AT&T acquired the mass market fiber business of Lumen Technologies, it placed these assets in a holding company that was temporarily called NetworkCo, but has since been renamed Forged Fiber 37.
According to an AT&T press release, AT&T plans to sell partial ownership of Forged Fiber 37 to an equity partner sometime this year. Upon closing a transaction with an equity partner, Forged Fiber 37 plans to “operate as a wholesale commercial open access platform, providing fiber access services to AT&T as the anchor tenant."
Forged Fiber 37 will manage the infrastructure assets, while AT&T manages the customer-facing relationships.
AT&T didn’t provide any updates on the Forged Fiber 37 JV during its Q2 earnings call.
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