Lumen Technologies is on a quest to return to revenue growth, a goal it aims to achieve within the next couple of years. But there’s an old adage that you have to spend money to make money and Lumen’s CEO Jeff Storey said it plans to do just that in 2022.
Speaking during Citi’s AppsEconomy conference this week, Storey stated 2022 will be “somewhat of an investment year” for the company. In addition to revving up its recently announced Quantum Fiber expansion project, the CEO said it plans to pump cash into marketing, branding, product development, edge computing and enhancements to its Lumen platform.
“This is a year when we need to do the types of things I talked about, continue to invest in product development, continue to invest in our brand, continue to invest in the resources necessary to sell, provide and develop all of these capabilities that our customers are really wanting,” he said.
On the edge computing front, Storey said the company is done investing in coverage since it already reaches 97% of U.S. enterprises within 5 ms of latency. Its focus now will be on success-based investments in density and capacity “as our customers are buying more and more services from us.”
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Storey reiterated its Quantum Fiber expansion is expected to add a million-plus locations this year – an increase from its historical pace of 400,000 new passings per year – at a targeted cost of less than $1,000 per home. In addition to expanding its residential footprint, he explained Lumen is focused on using fiber to create new opportunities in the enterprise and wholesale markets.
“Fiber and data communications are more important than ever. But we don't just look at it as data growth opportunity,” Storey explained. “We look at combining our fiber infrastructure with capabilities like SASE, edge computing and dynamic connections. Dynamic connections is really our network-as-a-service capability. We create hybrid computing and networking environments that empower the enterprises to acquire, analyze and act on their data.”
He continued that when pitted against any other technology, “fiber wins. And we'll continue to deliver the majority of our services over fiber infrastructure and integrate those capabilities into an all-digital experience. And when you do that, I think Lumen wins.”
The moves are all part of Storey’s grand vision of transforming Lumen from a telecom company into a technology company, a strategy he highlighted during the conference. As Lumen works its way through this shift, he said it will also need to continue to invest in the right talent to develop the capabilities it wants to deliver and flesh out its managed services offerings.