CenturyLink Discusses 2017-2019 Strategy

Telecompetitor has an article about CenturyLink's plans for 2017 and beyond.  Among the "revelations" in the article is their plan for increasing speeds to customers.

Another element of the CenturyLink broadband strategy is a network upgrade scheduled for completion in 2019. Upgrade plans focus on the company’s top 25 markets. In those markets, Ewing outlined speed targets as follows:

• --At least 40 Mbps to 90% of CenturyLink’s customer base
  --At least 100 Mbps to 70% of CenturyLink’s customer base
  --1 Gbps to 20% of CenturyLink’s customer base

As the bold section shows, they plan go focus on their Top 25 markets for network upgrades.  It's unclear if their Top 25 markets include and areas of Iowa (perhaps the Des Moines metro where the do have some FTTP deployed, including at the author's house), but it almost certainly doesn't include any of their smaller exchanges in Iowa.

As CenturyLink, Windstream, Frontier and other ILEC's continue to lag on network upgrades, and as Mediacom presses forward with their "Gigasphere" initiative, many Iowa communities are left with a situation where only ONE provider can provide 21st Century speeds...Mediacom.  And monopolies rarely work to the consumer's benefit.