CenturyLink connects 14,000 homes in Boulder, Colo. to fiber for gigabit speeds

CenturyLink has big plans to bring more fiber to more cities this year. On Friday, CenturyLink announced it recently finished up a fiber project that connected 14,000 additional homes, in Boulder, Colorado to gigabit speeds. The fiber-to-the-home project, which also included some businesses in the Boulder area, started last year.

“As technology moves at a breakneck pace, Boulder welcomes CenturyLink’s infrastructure improvements for benefiting small businesses and homes alike,” said Andrea Meneghel, director of public affairs, Boulder Chamber of Commerce, in a statement. “CenturyLink is an important economic partner for Boulder and this fiber gigabit expansion gives our community a tremendous advantage with more broadband availability and faster speeds, positioning us ahead of today’s standards and preparing our community for future innovations.”

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The faster broadband speeds are especially useful during the coronavirus pandemic for work from home employees and for remote learning. Boulder is the home of the University of Colorado. Due to its quality of life, Boulder has also attracted bioscience, aerospace, and environmentally friendly businesses, among others.

“Working together to overcome this disruption of our daily lives, the internet connection is more important than ever. Powering homes, businesses, education health care and entertainment, it is crucial to our lives right now,” said Guy Gunther, senior director consumer fiber markets, CenturyLink, in a statement. “CenturyLink Fiber Gigabit can provide the capacity customers need, now and into the future, connecting people to work from home, distance learning, telemedicine, video entertainment, gaming and more. "

Last year, CenturyLink expanded its fiber network to reach an estimated 300,000 additional homes and small businesses with its gigabit service. CenturyLink's consumer fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) projects provide symmetrical speeds of up to 940 Mbps. In addition to Boulder, the faster speeds were enabled in parts of Spokane, Washington, and Tucson, Arizona last year.

In 2020, CenturyLink will build out its fiber network to an additional 400,000 homes and small businesses, including in Denver, Omaha, Nebraska; Phoenix; Portland, Oregon; Salt Lake City; Spokane, Washington; and Springfield, Missouri.

Last year, CenturyLink connected an estimated 18,00 additional buildings to its global fiber network. All told, CenturyLink has about 450,000 global route miles of fiber across its network, and it plans to add more this year.

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CenturyLink plans to expand its fiber network infrastructure in 20 additional cities this year to help national and regional enterprise businesses meet the growing demand for high-speed connectivity.

In 2019, CenturyLink announced it was beefing up its fiber network by adding 4.7 million miles of fiber across its inter-city networks in the U.S. and Europe. In addition to fiber-based services for consumers and businesses, as well as backhaul for 5G, CenturyLink is also using its fiber to provision 106 edge locations across its U.S. network to provide a range of low latency managed services and hybrid cloud solutions for its customers.