Lumen is Increasing Rates…Again

Tony  Hello, today is Thursday, October 30th, 2025.  I’m Tony Mangino from TC2 and this is Staying Connected. In mid-2023 we covered Lumen’s announcement that they would increase rates by 7.47% on services that were out of term and had rolled over onto a month-to-month basis.   Well, we are back because Lumen has a new, even more egregious rate increase policy. I’m joined by my colleague Theresa Knutson a fellow Director at TC2.   Theresa, thanks for joining me today. 

Theresa: Thanks Tony, it’s great to be back.  I wish it was under better circumstances.  

Tony: Tell us about Lumen’s price increase actions. 

Theresa: Lumen provided notice to its customers in the May 2023 invoices that they were implementing a policy to increase MRC rates up to 7.47% annually for all out-of-term Services provided on a month-to-month basis. Lumen noted that: “These price adjustments support our continued investments in network, product and service enhancements. If your Services are or will be out-of-term and provided on a month-to-month basis within the next 12 months, they are eligible for this re-rate.”   These rate changes started showing up for customers in the third quarter of 2023.

Tony:  What is Lumen doing now?

Theresa:  We’re now seeing another round of out-of-term rate increases, and they’re significantly higher. Some clients are seeing hikes anywhere from 10% all the way up to 40%, with many falling on the higher end—around 30% to 40%.

Tony:  Just think about the fact that the rates that are out of term are likely 2-3 years old and likely already well above market rates.   Now with Lumen’s new price increases, the rates are even that much worse.     

Theresa:  Yes, to be fair, Lumen is well within its rights to raise your out-of-term rates given 30 days’ written notice and account teams are communicating this to their clients.  Lumen is offering to negate this rate increase if you sign up for a 1-year renewal term.   

Tony:  How nice of them!  This really puts Lumen at a competitive disadvantage as enterprise customers don’t like to be held hostage.   This definitely has the potential to sour Lumen’s reputation with their enterprise customers. 

Theresa:   Right. Lumen is also offering modest discounts for longer renewals—about 7% to 10% if you agree to a two-year term, and 12% to 15% if you go for three years, compared to your current in-term pricing.
The key thing to keep in mind here is ETF risk—early termination fees. If you plan to keep your circuits in place for the foreseeable future, a one-, two-, or three-year renewal might make sense. But don’t just take Lumen’s word on pricing—benchmark it against the broader market to make sure you’re getting a fair deal.

Tony:   Yes, their strategy seems to push enterprise customers to take their Lumen services to competitive RFP bids.  Ironically, a savvy customer may even choose to take a 1-or 2 year renewal to provide time to transition services away from Lumen.

 Theresa: That’s right. If you’re in renewal discussions with Lumen, my biggest piece of advice is: go in with data. Have your current rates benchmarked against market prices so you’re negotiating from a position of strength.
We’ve seen plenty of cases where Lumen’s pricing isn’t consistent—especially on ports. In theory, port pricing at the same bandwidth should be identical, but in practice, it often isn’t. Lumen tends to custom-price individual ports over time, and that can leave customers with a patchwork of inconsistent rates.

Tony: What can companies do to gauge this risk?

Theresa: Request a complete inventory of all Lumen services from your account manager immediately.  Make sure to specifically request that the contract start and end dates for all circuits be included in that report.   Lumen has an inventory report that they can provide very quickly to meet these needs—I,e. in less than 3-5 business days if have you a knowledgeable account manager. 

Tony:  That report will be incredibly valuable as you can sort the services by contract end date and see where your exposure is and then make plans on how to address with your account manager.   We do see Lumen as one of the suppliers who requires individual circuit terms on the entirety of the circuit (access, ports, etc) and often those circuit terms —and that commitment can be problematic for any organization that is going through an IT transformation—like a move to SD-Wan. 

 TK; Yes, I think that this rate increase is going to come back to bite Lumen as it will leave their customers frustrated and angry and likely companies could exclude them from future provisioning activities and competitive RFPs.  Also, to make matters worse is that when base rates go up, there is a corresponding increase in taxes and regulatory fees that further compounds this issue.  

Tony:  Thanks Theresa for this important and timely update.  And for our listeners, if you would like to discuss this further, I really do encourage you to contact Theresa, me, or any of our TC2 and LB3 colleagues because our experts know exactly how to help you get access to the right information to quantify the potential magnitude of this risk for your environment and create a strategy to effectively mitigate that exposure.     

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