What replaced CenturyLink?
CenturyLink did not shut down. It was renamed, rebranded and partly sold off — which is why you keep seeing three different names for what used to be one company.
CenturyLink still exists as a brand, but its parent company is now Lumen Technologies, its fiber service is sold under the name Quantum Fiber, and its copper network across 20 states was sold to Brightspeed in 2022. Which name you actually deal with depends entirely on your address and whether the line to your home is fiber or copper.
CenturyLink was not replaced so much as divided
The confusion is reasonable, because three things happened in quick succession. In 2020 the parent company renamed itself Lumen Technologies, keeping CenturyLink as a consumer-facing brand rather than a corporate one. Then the company began selling its newer fiber-to-the-home service under a separate brand, Quantum Fiber. Then in 2022 it sold a large part of its older copper telephone network — the lines that carry DSL — to a new company called Brightspeed.
The result is that a service which used to have one name now has up to three, and none of them is wrong. If you had CenturyLink DSL in 2019, your service today might be billed by CenturyLink, by Quantum Fiber, or by Brightspeed, without you having changed anything.
Quantum Fiber is the fiber half
Quantum Fiber is the brand for fiber-to-the-home built by the same company. It is not a different network bolted on; it is the modern half of the same footprint, marketed separately. The service is deliberately more digital-first than legacy CenturyLink: sign-up and billing happen online, pricing is flat rather than promotional, and there is no annual contract.
Where Quantum Fiber is available it is generally the better product by a wide margin, because it is fiber rather than copper. Symmetrical upload speeds and a flat rate that does not jump in year two are the two differences most people notice.
Brightspeed bought the copper half in 20 states
In 2022 Lumen sold its incumbent local telephone business across 20 states to Brightspeed, a company created for the purpose. Customers in those states were moved over without choosing to be. If your bill changed name to Brightspeed and nothing else changed, this is why.
Brightspeed has been building its own fiber over parts of that copper footprint since. So in those 20 states, the question is no longer CenturyLink versus anything — it is whether Brightspeed has upgraded your particular street yet.
Which one serves you depends on the address, not the city
This is the part that trips people up. All three brands can appear in the same metro area, and sometimes on the same street, because the dividing line is what physical line runs to the building. A house with fiber in the ground may be a Quantum Fiber address while the house behind it is still on copper.
The only reliable way to know is to check what providers actually file coverage for your specific address rather than your town. Provider availability checkers will happily tell you what they wish they could sell you.
What this means when you are shopping
Be careful comparing reviews. A great deal of the negative sentiment attached to the CenturyLink name is about aging DSL — slow speeds, long outages, indifferent support. A great deal of the positive sentiment attached to Quantum Fiber is about fiber. Those are two different products from one company, and a review of one tells you very little about the other.
So when you see CenturyLink listed at your address, the first question is not whether CenturyLink is good. It is which technology they are offering you. If the answer is DSL, compare it against cable and 5G home internet rather than against fiber. If the answer is fiber, it is likely the strongest option available to you.
Jean founded ShopHighSpeed after trying to find one straight answer about business internet in his own town. He builds the site’s rankings from the availability data providers file with the FCC rather than from provider marketing.