CenturyLink Aims To Ease Minnesota Landline Repair Rules

CBS Minnesota

June 10, 2021

Telecommunications company CenturyLink has asked Minnesota utility regulators to ease a decades-old rule that requires it to give priority for repairs to landline customers, saying the requirement is obsolete in an era dominated by broadband communications.

CenturyLink, a unit of Lumen Technologies, is the largest provider of copper landline phone service in Minnesota and one of the few companies still serving that segment. It petitioned the state’s independent Public Utilities Commission this week to bring its rules up to date, saying customer choices and demands have changed dramatically since the rules were drafted, before the first handheld cellphone appeared on the U.S. market in the 1980s.

“Prioritizing landline voice service made sense in 1983,” the company wrote in its petition Monday. “Today, it hampers deployment of broadband to Minnesota, harms broadband customers and harms the public interest. It is time for a change.”

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