CenturyLink 2013 Annual Report Download - page 6

4 CenturyLink 2013 Annual Review
To Our Shareholders (cont.)
“ In 2013, we strengthened our competitive
position by enhancing our network and data
center assets, expanding our cloud capabilities
and enlarging our sales organizations.”
In the fourth quarter of 2013, we introduced our new Managed Office
solution for small-to-mid-size businesses to offer customers the
advantages of managed services in a flexible and scalable environ-
ment. Our Managed Office product is a bundled solution that includes
managed network and hosted Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP),
managed hardware, hosted apps and cloud-based storage, security
software and managed installation and training. Customers can
buy Managed Office on a monthly price-per-employee basis, which
benefits businesses of all sizes by making it easy to scale and predict
communication costs.
We are excited about the products and services we are able to deliver
to our diverse set of business customers. Whether we are working
with a global financial services provider to deliver complex network
solutions and integrated cloud-enabled services, a large enterprise to
provide IT services in connection with a cloud conversion or a small
business to provision our Managed Office solution, CenturyLink has
the full range of assets and capabilities to meet our customers’ needs.
Improving Lives
As with our business customers, consumers are showing increasing
interest in higher bandwidth speeds and more robust broadband-
enabled products and services. CenturyLink is investing to enable
consumers to take advantage of their broadband connection to make
life easier and more enjoyable. Our efforts were rewarded as we saw
strong growth in our consumer broadband business.
We added 140,000 new high-speed Internet subscribers during 2013;
a performance that we think was among the best in the industry. Rec-
ognizing consumers’ desire for greater speeds, we deployed 1 Gbps
service in select neighborhoods in Omaha, Las Vegas and Salt Lake
City. Early results in these deployments indicate excellent market
penetration and significant positive impacts throughout the market.
In addition, 69,000 new customers subscribed to our Prism™ TV
service during the year. We launched Prism™ TV service in Phoenix,
Colorado Springs, Omaha and a suburb of Denver during 2013.
In addition, we further expanded the innovative applications we
offer to consumers with the launch of Connected Home, our home
security and automation service.
We are very encouraged by consumer response to our investments
to enable more robust speeds. We plan to continue to deploy these
types of services with our disciplined investment approach.
Driving Growth Through Strategic Investment
We consistently invest in our business with a focus on enabling higher
bandwidth, IP-based functionality and IT-driven services. We strive
to listen to our customers to identify and develop innovations with
the greatest potential to enable growth for businesses and enhance
quality of life for consumers. In 2013, we broke ground on our Tech-
nology Center of Excellence adjacent to our corporate headquarters
in Monroe, La., where we expect to bring together the right people
and technologies to drive future innovation and growth. We also
made progress during the year through continued investments in
the following strategic initiatives.
We expanded and enhanced our broadband capabilities. We added
6.7 terabits per second of capacity to our backbone network in 2013,
ending the year with a total capacity of approximately 16 terabits per
second. We improved broadband speed availability across our foot-
print and launched our first three 1 Gbps markets. We also continued
our focused deployment of fiber to multi-tenant buildings, adding
1,000 fiber-fed buildings in 2013. During the year, we began work on
network simplification efforts, which we expect to drive faster provi-
sioning and better service for our customers. Additionally, CenturyLink
may have the potential to bring broadband access to more than
680,000 unserved rural households following the finalization of the
Federal Communication Commission’s Connect America Funds (CAF)
II program. However, it is still too early to determine the final outcome
of the CAF II proceeding now before the FCC.
We continue to expand our Prism™ TV footprint and grow our
subscriber base. We plan to expand Prism™ TV service to 300,000
to 400,000 additional homes in 2014. We also continue to enhance
entertainment and video features available to our Prism™ TV sub-
scribers. For example, in 2013 we added TV Everywhere capabilities,
enhanced our Video On Demand library and introduced new video
packages such as our Prism™ TV Preferred package, which appeals
to budget-conscious customers who want premium content. We also
initiated a successful trial of wireless set-top boxes.