AT&T To Buy Lumen’s FTTH Biz

A substantial M&A landed yesterday with a pile of FTTH customers changing hands. AT&T announced a deal to acquire Lumen’s Mass Markets fiber connectivity business for $5.75B in cash.

The deal covers 1M fiber customers across 11 states, with about 4M homes passed and represents substantially all of Lumen’s Quantum fiber business. The deal includes not just fiber but also network assets in central offices that enable them, certain fiber network deployment capabilities and a swath of employees. It does not include any enterprise fiber or any copper-based customers or assets.

While the deal doesn’t include those legacy assets, it certainly takes AT&T’s FTTH business well beyond its traditional ILEC footprint and into major metros like Denver, Las Vegas, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Orlando, Phoenix, Portland, Salt Lake City and Seattle that were once strongholds of Qwest and CenturyLink. The company expects its fiber reach to extend from 30M or so today up to some 60M locations by the end of 2030.

AT&T is planning to follow up the deal with the sale of a stake in NetworkCo, bringing an equity partner into the mix within a year of closing this deal.

Meanwhile, Lumen will be tightening its focus on the enterprise marketplace. They will use the cash proceeds to pay down some $4.8B in debt and reduce interest expenses by $300M. Meanwhile they expect to see capex drop by $1B annually as well. Lumen plans to expand its national fiber footprint to 47M intercity fiber miles by 2028.

The deal is expected to close in the first half of 2026 after regulators do their thing. That would be a pretty quick turnaround for a purchase of this size by one of the country’s largest incumbents, but I guess that’s why it covers fiber with no copper involved. That said, I’ll bet neither side wants much political attention in this environment and will hope to keep things under the radar to the extent they can.

If you haven't already, please take our Reader Survey! Just 3 questions to help us better understand who is reading Telecom Ramblings so we can serve you better!

Categories: Fiber Networks · FTTH · Mergers and Acquisitions