Brightspeed availability: former CenturyLink lines, copper and new fiber

Brightspeed's footprint, as of June 30, 2026

In the FCC National Broadband Map as of June 30, 2026 (file revision of November 10, 2026), Brightspeed lists 4,930,860 broadband serviceable locations: houses, apartment buildings and small businesses where it says it provides service or could install it within ten business days. That is 4.3% of all 115,784,915¹ US locations. The filing comes from a single FCC provider, with Connect Holding II LLC as the holding company and Brightspeed as the only brand name.

The 20 states run from New Jersey and Pennsylvania through Virginia and the Carolinas to Alabama, Louisiana and Texas, and north through Missouri and Kansas to Indiana, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin. Two of them hold more than a third of the footprint. In North Carolina Brightspeed reports 1,199,644 locations, 27.1% of the state, and in Missouri 587,529, or 23.3%. Ohio (484,595), Texas (332,264) and Virginia (309,258¹) follow by count.

Count and share rank the states differently. Texas is fourth by count but Brightspeed reaches only 3.2% of its locations, while Arkansas (16.2%), Wisconsin (12.3%) and Alabama (12.3%) have smaller counts and much larger shares. At the small end, the filing lists 1,524¹ locations in Oklahoma.

Every row reads "new" in the change column, for the reason in the next section.

No 2022 baseline: a network that changed hands

On October 3, 2022, Lumen Technologies closed the sale of its local phone operations in 20 states to Brightspeed and kept its local networks in sixteen others. The first National Broadband Map is dated June 30, 2022, before the sale, so these lines appear there in CenturyLink's filing and Brightspeed has no figures for that release. A 2022 figure for Brightspeed's territory belongs to a different filer.

The comparison the data do support is the latest six months. Between December 31, 2025 and June 30, 2026, Brightspeed's footprint changed by −81,117 locations while its fiber footprint changed by +182,081⁴. With fiber up and the total down, the number of locations where Brightspeed lists DSL but no fiber fell by more than the fiber count rose. The FCC revises its location list every release, and a provider can drop locations from its filing without removing a line, so these are differences between two filings, not a construction record.

Two speeds under one name

What Brightspeed can offer at an address depends on whether the line there is fiber or copper. The filing lists three technologies; a location can appear under more than one.

Fiber1,975,566

DSL (copper)3,011,859

Unlicensed fixed wireless9,540

Source: FCC, National Broadband Map, data as of June 30, 2026. Broadband serviceable locations in the 50 states and DC where Brightspeed reports each technology, as of June 30, 2026. A location reached by two technologies counts in both.

Show the numbers

Technology	Locations	At 100/20 Mbps or more	Fastest advertised download (Mbps)
Fiber	1,975,566	1,975,566	8,000
DSL (copper)	3,011,859	1,022	140
Unlicensed fixed wireless	9,540	0	10

• DSL over telephone copper at 3,011,859 locations, with advertised downloads up to 140 Mbps. Just 1,022 of them are filed at 100 Mbps download and 20 Mbps upload or more.
• Fiber to the premises at 1,975,566 locations, with advertised downloads up to 8 Gbps. All 1,975,566 are filed at 100/20 or more.
• Unlicensed fixed wireless at 9,540 locations, with advertised downloads up to 10 Mbps¹.

Nationally, that makes Brightspeed the third-largest DSL filer (3.0 million locations), after AT&T and CenturyLink, and the eighth-largest fiber filer (2.0 million), close to Google Fiber (2.0 million). For a reader the rule is simple: a Brightspeed listing at 100/20 is almost always fiber, and a listing below it is DSL. The state figures make the same point: in each of Brightspeed's ten largest states, the share of locations where it reports 100/20 matches its fiber share to within a tenth of a point, as in North Carolina (11.6% and 11.5%¹).

Those state figures also show how far fiber has spread in each part of the footprint. In North Carolina, Ohio and Tennessee, Brightspeed reports fiber at 11.5%, 5.3% and 4.1% of all locations, against total shares of 27.1%, 10.7% and 7.1%. In Wisconsin and Virginia fiber covers a much smaller part of the footprint: 2.8% against 12.3%, and 3.0% against 10.6%¹.

Four large cities, and almost none of the rest

Brightspeed is a small-town and rural network. Among the 343 cities of 100,000 or more, it reaches most locations in only four. After those four, the highest share is 9.5% in Fishers, Indiana. In Raleigh it reports 2.0% of locations, in Kansas City 209 locations, and in Columbus, Ohio, 16¹.

In the four cities, the same company files very different networks:

• Springfield, Missouri: Brightspeed reports service at 91.4% of locations, all of it fiber (91.4%). Mediacom (98.4%) and AT&T (95.3%) are listed nearly everywhere too.
• Killeen, Texas: service at 89.7%, fiber at 86.4%. Spectrum is listed at 96.9% of locations, and Verizon and T-Mobile with fixed wireless.
• Columbia, Missouri: service at 91.8%, fiber at 67.5%, with an advertised maximum of 2 Gbps. Mediacom reports service at 90.0% of locations and Socket Telecom at 87.7%.
• Fayetteville, North Carolina: service at 94.8%, but fiber at only 48.9%. Close to half of Brightspeed's listings in the city are not fiber, and Spectrum (96.5%¹) is the only provider listed more widely.

Across all providers, the four cities have high fiber coverage, from 87.8% of locations in Fayetteville to 93.0% in Springfield, and two separate fiber networks are common: 44.0% of Springfield's locations and 45.9%¹ of Fayetteville's have two or more.

Where Brightspeed is the only wired option at 100/20

At 98,296 locations, Brightspeed is the only wired provider reporting 100/20 Mbps. Among its ten largest states, the share is highest in North Carolina (0.9% of the state's locations) and Arkansas (0.8%). In Ohio, Tennessee, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin the share rounds to 0.1%, and in Indiana to 0.0%¹.

The number is small for a footprint of 4.9 million¹ because most Brightspeed locations are DSL and do not reach 100/20 at all. Where Brightspeed has copper only, a home that needs 100/20 depends on another provider: a cable company, another fiber network or fixed wireless, if any is listed.

How to read these figures

Every figure here comes from Brightspeed's own filing to the FCC, as of June 30, 2026. "Available" means Brightspeed reports that it serves the location or could install service within ten business days; it does not mean a line is connected, and a listing that looks wrong can be challenged on the FCC National Broadband Map. Speeds are maximum advertised speeds, not measured speeds, and the data contain no prices or plan details, which Brightspeed shows on its broadband facts labels.