AT&T to Acquire Lumen’s Consumer Fiber Division for $5.75 Billion

AT&T  has clinched a deal to acquire Lumen Technologies, consumer fiber operations for $5.75 billion in cash, the companies said on Wednesday, as the wireless provider adds further scale to its national fiber footprint.

Lumen‘s shares were up 13% in after-market trading on the sale of the business, which provides high-speed internet services to residential customers.

Acquiring the unit will give AT&T over 1 million fiber customers, as well as help it grow its fiber coverage in Denver, Las Vegas, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Orlando, Phoenix, Portland, Salt Lake City and Seattle, according to the company.

A source says that Lumen began working with a broker to sell the business in December.

The deal allows Lumen to focus on growing the company’s enterprise fiber business, Lumen Chief Financial Officer Chris Stansbury.

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It means the company will be able to add low-latency technology, vital for supporting machine learning tasks.

“The customers are asking us to go faster, which is really to deliver their needs in a multi cloud, AI-first world,” Stansbury said.

Lumen plans to use the money from the sale to lower its debt by $4.8 billion and cut annual interest costs by more than $300 million, according to him.

It is currently planned that the transaction will complete in the first half of 2026. Once the merger is finished, AT&T will use a new subsidiary, holding the acquired assets and additional capabilities, to sell a piece of the new company.