Lumen expands partnership with Zoom

After first announcing they were working together in September, Lumen and Zoom have expanded their partnership.

Similar to deployments by BT and Deutsche Telekom, Lumen is now offering a dedicated Zoom service to its customers. "Zoom delivered by Lumen" blends Lumen’s embedded network security capabilities and fiber network with Zoom’s built-in security features to proactively protect businesses using their combined services.

Over the coming months, the two companies will launch new features and enhancements, including Zoom Phone and Lumen Cloud Connect for Zoom.

In late September, Lumen announced a new partnership to incorporate Zoom into its portfolio of voice and collaboration services. Lumen CEO Jeff Storey said on November's third quarter earnings call that the service was seeing commercial success and that Lumen planned further integration with Zoom.  

RELATED: Deutsche Telekom strikes up a connection with Zoom for its German customers

Earlier this month, Deutsche Telekom announced it had struck up partnership with Zoom Video Communications. Last month, BT forged a carrier agreement that allowed it to offer Zoom Meetings as a managed service for its customers.

Zoom competes against Cisco's Webex, Google's Meet platform and Microsoft Teams for both paid and free video conferencing services for consumers and enterprises.

The Covid-19 pandemic has propelled Zoom into prominence as businesses, schools and other entities use its video conferencing platform. With millions of employees working from home, along with students that were also home bound, Zoom has seen massive growth this year. In April, Zoom said it had more than 300 million daily meeting participants after having 10 million in December.

Zoom will be reporting its third quarter earnings after the market closes on Nov. 30. In its Q2 earnings in August, Zoom reported $0.92 earnings per share for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $0.45 by $0.47. Zoom posted Q2 revenue of $663.50 million, which was up 354% compared to the same quarter a year ago.