Lumen Technologies plans to shut down its legacy copper services in Iowa, Florida, Nevada and Utah, and its chief financial officer expects the move to generate between $1 billion and $1.5 billion in pretax net proceeds from copper recovery over the next five years. The four states account for about 25 percent of the company's copper network, and the shutdown is targeted for completion by the end of next year.
The decision is part of a broader effort to reposition the company as an enterprise connectivity provider for the artificial intelligence era. Lumen intends to pair its fiber network with Alkira software, a carrier-agnostic platform, so that customers can connect across different network providers rather than relying on a single carrier. The company has also pursued a set of recent initiatives in intelligent networking, AI energy, quantum computing and security. Lumen is ranked No. 354 on the Fortune 500.
Lumen will stop marketing new copper services and will work with regulators while meeting its existing service obligations to customers during the transition. The company says decommissioning the aging infrastructure will reduce both operating and capital costs, since maintaining older copper lines requires ongoing spending that a modern fiber network does not. The value of the copper recovery, however, depends on copper prices, which can move over the recovery window, so the $1 billion to $1.5 billion estimate is tied to market conditions rather than a fixed sum.
The changes come as Lumen reports a difficult revenue picture. In the third quarter, the company posted revenue of $2.72 billion, down 12.1 percent from a year earlier. The decline was driven largely by the sale of consumer fiber to AT&T, a transaction that removed a large block of revenue from Lumen's results rather than reflecting a loss of business demand. Adjusted EBITDA came in at $715 million, and the company reported an adjusted loss of 14 cents per share, a figure narrower than analysts had expected.
Strategic revenue, which the company tracks as a key measure of its newer business, rose 10 percent to $1.28 billion, driven by demand linked to artificial intelligence. That growth is central to the company's argument that its future rests on enterprise and AI-related connectivity rather than the legacy services it is winding down. Lumen reaffirmed its full-year EBITDA and free cash flow guidance, signaling confidence that the business can keep generating cash while the transition unfolds.
Chief Executive Kate Johnson and Chief Financial Officer Chris Stansbury are leading the roughly four-year transformation. Their central challenge is sustaining growth while replacing the revenue and cash generated by legacy businesses that are now being retired. Whether the copper recovery and the expansion of strategic revenue can fill that gap will shape how the company's shift is judged over the coming years.