CenturyLink’s Broken Promises: The Fight for Reliable Service

Posted on September 9, 2025 by Cassie Allen
Tags, Energy, General Interest

Senior on landline telephone in cottage kitchen

CenturyLink, also known as Lumen, has a problem. For years, CenturyLink has failed customers, especially seniors and rural communities, by not delivering on its promise to provide quality telephone and internet service.

This is especially true in Jacksonville, Oregon, where last year regulators at the Public Utility Commission investigated reliability issues with CenturyLink’s landline phone service. Despite orders to fix their faulty service, chronic issues remain, such as dropped calls and service outages, poor customer service, and unreliable landline service.

CUB knows that providing quality telephone and internet service is crucial for health, safety, and connecting the community. In a medical emergency or during a fire, reliable phone service can mean the difference between life and death. CenturyLink must be held accountable for its poor service.

What You Can Do: Use Your Voice

Public pressure is a vital tool in creating change. Regulators at the Public Utility Commission need to hear directly from you about your experience with CenturyLink’s telephone service, and why strong protections matter to you. Take these actions today to support our work and hold CenturyLink accountable:

Action 1: Submit a comment to regulators to make your voice heard today! Submitting public comments shows regulators that you’re concerned about CenturyLink’s service. Share your experience with CenturyLink’s poor service, and why strong protections matter to you, to help hold CenturyLink accountable!

Submit Public Comments

Action 2: Share your service outage stories! Share your story with CUB about the problems you’ve been having with your landline service, and if you feel like companies like CenturyLink have not been doing enough to honor their responsibilities to Oregon customers.

Share Your Landline Service Story

CenturyLink’s Broken Promises

CenturyLink provides telecommunications services to many residential customers across Oregon. Most Oregonians probably know CenturyLink as their former name, CenturyLink, or one of their subsidiaries: Qwest, United, or CenturyTel. CenturyLink rebranded as Lumen in 2020, though the name change didn’t deliver on improvements to service quality.

CenturyLink Continues to Fail its Oregon customers

CUB has long heard complaints from fed-up customers across Oregon about CenturyLink’s poor service. The company has ongoing service quality and safety issues, including:

Chronic dropped calls and phone outages
Not reliably responding to service requests
Violating safety standards for telephone poles

One town in Oregon has experienced more issues with CenturyLink than most others: Jacksonville, Oregon.

“The rural Jacksonville area cannot receive the safe and reliable landline service to which we are entitled by law unless Lumen is both aware of a new outage and initiates prioritized repair.”
- Priscilla Weaver, Jacksonville Sheep Farmer

Landline Service Issues Plague Jacksonville Residents

In 2024, regulators received complaints about CenturyLink’s landline telephone service in Southern Oregon. After months of investigating, regulators found that Jacksonville residents were experiencing multiple outages a year that threatened their health and safety. Access to reliable landline telephone service is crucial in areas of Oregon that don’t have access to cell service, especially during wildfire season or a medical emergency.

Regulators ordered CenturyLink to make big changes to fully support customers in and around its Jacksonville service area. Instead of fixing the problems, the phone provider challenged the order last year. CUB successfully fought that challenge and organized customers to submit comments to regulators, urging them to keep the protections in place.

This year, CUB heard from customers in the Jacksonville area that CenturyLink is not following through on its commitments. We asked regulators to hold them accountable, including issuing penalties. While this case is ongoing, CUB will work to ensure that all CenturyLink customers in Oregon have reliable access to telephone service.

Regulators Step In to Fix Service Issues

Because of the outcry from customers and CUB’s advocacy, regulators have taken some steps to fix service issues. However, the fight is not over, as too many customers still do not have reliable access to their landline service.

Protection Order for Jacksonville

The Public Utility Commission’s order adding protections for Jacksonville residents is still in place. Regulators are holding CenturyLink accountable for fixing all outage issues in the Jacksonville area within 48 hours, but chronic outages are still being reported in this wildfire-prone area.

Three years ago, regulators threatened to fine the company up to $50,000 per violation, per day if CenturyLink is not in compliance with the customer protections in its Orders. So far, that threat has not been put into action. CUB is closely watching this issue and working hard to ensure that CenturyLink is being held accountable for its actions.

Expanded Protections for Oregonians, but Delays for Jacksonville

Regulators approved a settlement agreement that expanded Jacksonville customer protections statewide to include households where landlines are the only communication service available.

Regulators also made a tangible commitment to improving service quality by tying any approved billing rate increase for CenturyLink to performance. This forces the company to improve its service if it wants to increase profits.

CenturyLink is committed to bringing fiber optic internet to Jacksonville as a solution to chronic service outages. Regulators approved this decision, but so far, CenturyLink has not delivered on this promise. The company told regulators that it had secured funding to bring fiber optic internet service across Oregon and to Jacksonville within a year. Yet CenturyLink chose to default on its Rural Development Opportunity grants statewide, including the one that would have paid for part of the Jacksonville-area infrastructure.

Recently, the company promised, yet again, that they will use federal funds to pay for expanded broadband service, but, with the current political landscape remaining uncertain, Jacksonville residents are still left in the lurch without a long-term solution to chronic outages. These outages have plagued Jacksonville customers for over three years, at least, including during an active wildfire.

Where Things Stand Now: Holding CenturyLink Accountable

Despite public outcry and regulator intervention, CenturyLink is still failing to meet service quality and safety rules, and residential customers are left without alternative options.

No one should have to go without reliable telephone service when cell service isn’t available and an emergency can strike. But that’s what communities in Oregon are being forced to do. CenturyLink must be held accountable for failing to protect customers and comply with the Commission’s Order.

CenturyLink has filed a 6-month performance plan to get in compliance with the rules. Regulators are meeting on September 16th to vote on whether to approve CenturyLink’s plan.

Many customers are rightly outraged at CenturyLink’s plan to bring in fiber optic cables to provide internet access. Obvious delays aside, fiber optic internet can’t be used without power. If rural customers lost power due to a wildfire, they still may not be able to contact emergency services without an expensive satellite phone. Rural areas are most prone to wildfires in Oregon, making the risk even greater. CenturyLink’s plan doesn’t address the needs of rural communities like Jacksonville.

CenturyLink’s poor service quality is part of a larger pattern. In Washington state, regulators recommended CenturyLink be fined $15.5 million, one of the largest penalties ever recommended by state regulators, for violating state law. These fines were levied after a substantial uptick in complaints by CenturyLink customers. CenturyLink was separately fined $1.3 million in Washington state for violating the 911 rule, which is in place to ensure customers can always contact emergency services. CenturyLink appealed Washington’s regulators’ decision to impose that fine, but the company lost on appeal.

More needs to be done to ensure that Oregon households can access landline telephone service. CUB staff are working hard to hold CenturyLink accountable for providing reliable service to the Oregon communities.

Use Your Voice to Hold CenturyLink Accountable

Submit Public Comments

Share Your Landline Service Story

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