CenturyLink To Offer Low-Cost Internet Plus Training

Telecommunications provider CenturyLink has embarked on an aggressive campaign to add broadband subscribers by offering low rates and free classes. This move originated with FCC regulators as conditions for approving CenturyLink's 2011, $22 billion merger with Qwest.

The merged company, now the nation's third-largest telecommunications company, has 17 million access lines, many in rural parts of the South and West, as well as five million broadband subscribers. But to do business, according to the FCC's merger approval order,

The FCC imposed several conditions to mitigate 'the risk of harm to competition,' including offering $10 broadband and $150 computers to low income households. The freshly-merged company must also deliver broadband service at speeds of at least 4 Mbps to an additional 4 million households, double the number of current homes that can get 12 Mbps broadband, and triple the number that can get 40 Mbps broadband."

In addition to low-cost  service and laptops, the company, is offering computer training without charge to Internet Basics subscribers "through community groups and senior centers, as well as schools, libraries, and other state and local institutions, in more than 100 markets throughout the country."

Speed Matters has long pointed out that low-income people, and particularly rural low-income, have substandard access to high-speed Internet - either because it doesn't exist or because they can't afford it. According to

One-third of U.S. households don't subscribe to broadband, even though they have access to broadband networks. Or, as the Pew Internet and American Life project put it, "even as broadband use has spread, there has been persistent evidence that some segments of the population are not part of the broadband adoption story."

This move by CenturyLink, spurred on by federal regulation, may help to close the gap, and may prompt other carriers to meet these offers.

CenturyLink company profile (New York Times, April 22, 2010)

FCC Gives CenturyLink/Qwest Merger Approval (DSL Reports, March 21, 2011)

CenturyLink Introduces Internet Basics for Low-Income Consumers (Sacramento Bee, Oct. 3, 2011)

Trends in broadband adoption (Pew Internet and American Life project, Aug 11, 2010)