CenturyLink Inc. CTL, the third largest wireline service provider in the U.S., yesterday announced the availability of 1 Gbps (gigabit per second) fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) connections in 17 states to provide symmetrical gigabit services to nearly 490,000 small and mid-sized (SMB) business locations.

The SMB segment represents a massive growth opportunity for the telecom industry. Significant improvement in business data and video traffic is expected to act as a future growth catalyst for the industry. Several industry researchers predict that the SMB segment has a long-term market opportunity worth $20 billion - $30 billion.

In addition to providing 1 Gbps FTTP link, CenturyLink will also offer managed firewall, colocation and cloud services for both single-site and multi-site SMBs. The company boasts a strong portfolio that includes high-end services like big data analytics, disaster recovery, managed security, and managed LANs and WiFi networks. CenturyLink has a partnership with Microsoft Corp. MSFT, which enables it to tender business-specific services to SMBs at lower prices.

Over the last three years, CenturyLink has been trying all means to establish itself as a global leader in cloud infrastructure and hosted IT solutions for enterprise customers. Incidentally, the cloud-based communications and infrastructure market is intensely competitive, Amazon Web Services of Amazon.com Inc. AMZN and Google Compute Engine of Google Inc. GOOGL being the major contenders. 

We believe, by bundling cloud services with its gigabit capabilities, CenturyLink aims to make a persuasive offer to SMBs and to smaller sites of larger businesses. Moreover, the company is looking to deliver virtualized network functions through its gigabit connection to largely benefit business customers.

CenturyLink currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).

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