CenturyLink availability after the fiber sale: mostly DSL

CenturyLink's footprint, state by state

As of June 30, 2026 (FCC file revision of November 10, 2026), CenturyLink reports home internet at 9,883,745 broadband serviceable locations, the FCC's term for a home, an apartment building or a small business that could receive service. That is 8.5%¹ of all locations in the 50 states and DC. Its FCC filings list Lumen Technologies as the holding company.

The footprint lies in the West, the Great Plains and the Upper Midwest, plus part of Florida. By count, Arizona comes first with 1,692,586 locations, ahead of Colorado (1,145,057), Florida (1,120,094), Washington (898,346) and Minnesota (894,270). Measured as a share of each state, the order changes: CenturyLink is listed at 68.1% of New Mexico's locations, 60.7% of Arizona's, 59.8% of Wyoming's and 57.3% of Colorado's, but at only 14.5%¹ of Florida's.

In two of the 17 states the footprint is small. CenturyLink reports 55,355 locations in Wisconsin (2.4% of the state) and 2¹ in Texas. A listing means CenturyLink tells the FCC it serves a location or could install service there within ten business days; it can be challenged on the FCC National Broadband Map where it is wrong.

Mostly DSL, rarely 100/20

What a CenturyLink listing offers depends almost entirely on copper. The filing as of June 30, 2026 contains two technologies:

• DSL at 9,748,481 locations, with advertised downloads up to 140 Mbps. Only 453,219 of them are filed at 100 Mbps download and 20 Mbps upload or more.
• Fiber to the premises at 150,716 locations, with advertised downloads up to 8 Gbps; 146,217¹ of them at 100/20 or more.

Fiber150,716

DSL (copper)9,748,481

Source: FCC, National Broadband Map, data as of June 30, 2026. Broadband serviceable locations in the 50 states and DC where CenturyLink 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	150,716	146,217	8,000
DSL (copper)	9,748,481	453,219	140

CenturyLink holds the second-largest DSL footprint in the country (9.7 million locations), behind AT&T (23.3 million), and DSL is nearly all it reports. In none of its larger states does CenturyLink report 100/20 at more than a small fraction of locations: the highest share is Colorado's 5.4%, followed by Arizona's 4.7%. In Florida the figure is 0.3%¹.

The fastest advertised speed in a state's row of the table above can mislead. Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Minnesota and Washington each show 8 Gbps, but that maximum comes from its fiber, not its DSL; fiber is reported at 0.8% of Colorado's locations and 0.1%¹ of Florida's.

Where Quantum Fiber went

The largest change in CenturyLink's filing happened in the latest six months. Between December 31, 2025 and June 30, 2026, its fiber footprint changed by −3,007,007 locations and its whole footprint by −3,001,510⁴: almost all of the fall is fiber.

The network did not disappear. In a February 2, 2026 release filed with the SEC, Lumen said it had completed the sale of its consumer fiber-to-the-home business in eleven states, including Quantum Fiber, to AT&T, and that it was keeping its copper-based consumer services. The FCC data as of June 30, 2026, the first release after the sale, reflect the split. AT&T's fiber footprint changed by +4,121,113⁴ locations over the same six months, and AT&T now reports fiber at 28.0% of Colorado's locations, 22.6% of Utah's and 18.8%¹ of Minnesota's. In Denver, the city's Quantum Fiber records moved from CenturyLink's filing to AT&T's between the two releases.

Statewide fiber coverage kept rising through the change of filer. The share of Colorado's locations where any provider reports fiber went from 56.0% in December 2025 to 59.7%, while the share with DSL went from 59.1%⁴ to 57.3%¹.

June 30, 2022December 31, 2025June 30, 2026

Fiber available59.7% +31.7 pts

DSL available57.3% −7.5 pts

Source: FCC, National Broadband Map, data as of June 30, 2022; FCC, National Broadband Map, data as of December 31, 2025; FCC, National Broadband Map, data as of June 30, 2026. Shares of broadband serviceable locations in each FCC release (latest revision of each); the small number is the change in percentage points since June 30, 2022. The FCC's count of locations is updated with each release, so shares are compared rather than counts.

Show the numbers

Measure	June 30, 2022	December 31, 2025	June 30, 2026	Change (points)
Fiber available	28.0%	56.0%	59.7%	31.7 pts
DSL available	64.9%	59.1%	57.3%	−7.5 pts

For anyone reading older coverage reports, the practical point is the brand. Reports dated before 2026 that list CenturyLink or Quantum Fiber as a fiber provider describe a network that the current FCC data file under AT&T, apart from the 150,716¹ fiber locations CenturyLink still reports.

Smaller than in 2022, for two reasons

Since the first National Broadband Map of June 30, 2022, CenturyLink's reported footprint has changed by −6,762,005³ locations. The FCC's own location list changes with every release, so part of any provider's change is bookkeeping. Most of this one follows two sales.

The first came after the June 2022 data date. On October 3, 2022, Lumen closed the sale of its local phone operations in 20 states to Brightspeed and said it kept its local networks in sixteen states. The state table above shows where the June 2022 filing was much larger than today's, Texas and Wisconsin among them; the June 2022 filing also covered states where CenturyLink reports nothing today, so they do not appear in the table at all. Brightspeed now reports 332,264 locations in Texas and 283,841¹ in Wisconsin.

The second is the 2026 fiber sale. Before it, CenturyLink's fiber had been growing: the change since June 2022, −1,890,051³, is smaller than the change in the last six months alone, −3,007,007⁴. Across all providers, the share of US locations with any DSL fell by 18.6 percentage points over the four years, to 36.2%¹.

Where CenturyLink is the only fast wired option

At 26,764 locations, CenturyLink is the only wired provider reporting 100/20 Mbps. That is a small number for a footprint of this size, because CenturyLink reports 100/20 at so few of its own locations. The highest shares are in Nebraska (0.5% of the state's locations) and Montana (0.4%¹). Everywhere else that CenturyLink is listed at 100/20, at least one other wired provider is listed at that speed too.

Cities: wide reach, few fast lines

In many cities within its states, CenturyLink's copper reaches most locations. Its share is highest in Albuquerque, at 93.0%, where it reports 100/20 at 7.7% of locations; Xfinity reports 100/20 at 99.7% of the same city. In Phoenix, CenturyLink is listed at 71.6% of locations, with an advertised maximum of 140 Mbps and 100/20 at 7.1%¹.

The last column of the table is the one to read before relying on a CenturyLink listing: it shows how many of the city's locations CenturyLink files at 100/20 Mbps or more. All figures are maximum advertised speeds from CenturyLink's own filing as of June 30, 2026, not measured speeds, and they say nothing about prices or plans.