Company Overview

Where once there was the backyard fence, there is now CenturyTel to help spread small-town gossip. Formerly Century Telephone, CenturyTel is a local exchange provider, primarily in rural areas. The company now has some 3 million customers in 22 states. CenturyTel sold its wireless operations to Alltel in 2002 and now concentrates solely on its core business. Chairman Clarke M. Williams was at the helm from the company’s founding in 1946 until 2002. Williams took the company public in 1978 and voraciously acquired rural and small town phone companies during the last 25 years, virtually ignoring the largest cities in the U.S. and concentrating on the Midwest, Pacific Northwest, and mid-South. The 2002 purchase of KMC Telecom’s fiber network and customer base in Monroe and Shreveport, Louisiana, allows CenturyTel to offer broadband service in those markets. In June 2003, CenturyTel bought the bankrupt Digital Teleport, a regional fiber-optics communications company.