Embarq
Encyclopedia
Embarq Corporation was the largest independent local exchange carrier
Local exchange carrier
Local Exchange Carrier is a regulatory term in telecommunications for the local telephone company.In the United States, wireline telephone companies are divided into two large categories: long distance and local...

 in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 (below the Baby Bells
Regional Bell Operating Company
The Regional Bell Operating Companies are the result of United States v. AT&T, the U.S. Department of Justice antitrust suit against the former American Telephone & Telegraph Company . On January 8, 1982, AT&T Corp. settled the suit and agreed to divest its local exchange service operating...

), serving customers in 18 states and providing local, long distance, high-speed data and wireless services to residential and business customers. It had been formerly the local telephone division (LTD) of Sprint Nextel
Sprint Nextel
Sprint Nextel Corporation is an American telecommunications company based in Overland Park, Kansas. The company owns and operates Sprint, the third largest wireless telecommunications network in the United States, with 53.4 million customers, behind Verizon Wireless and AT&T Mobility...

 until 2006, when it was spun off as an independent company. Embarq produced more than $6 billion in revenues annually, and had approximately 18,000 employees.

In 2009, it was purchased by CenturyTel, which rebranded as CenturyLink
CenturyLink
CenturyLink, Inc. is a United States telecommunications firm, headquartered in Monroe, Louisiana. The company, founded as Central Telephone & Electronics Corporation in 1968, later changed its name to Century Telephone Enterprises, Inc. in 1971, and then was called CenturyTel, Inc. from 1999 to 2010...

 after the merger.

Brown Telephone Company

The Sprint Corporation was founded in 1899 by Cleyson Leroy Brown under the name of the "Brown Telephone Company" in the small town of Abilene, Kansas
Abilene, Kansas
Abilene is a city in and the county seat of Dickinson County, Kansas, United States. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 6,844.-History:...

. The company was a landline telephone company that operated as a competitor to the Bell System
Bell System
The Bell System was the American Bell Telephone Company and then, subsequently, AT&T led system which provided telephone services to much of the United States and Canada from 1877 to 1984, at various times as a monopoly. In 1984, the company was broken up into separate companies, by a U.S...

.

United Telecom

In 1938, after emerging from bankruptcy
Bankruptcy
Bankruptcy is a legal status of an insolvent person or an organisation, that is, one that cannot repay the debts owed to creditors. In most jurisdictions bankruptcy is imposed by a court order, often initiated by the debtor....

, Brown changed its name to United Utilities. The company grew steadily through acquisitions and changed its name to United Telecommunications in 1972, at which time it provided local telephone service in many areas of the Midwest and South. United Telecom also operated many other types of businesses. In 1980 United Telecom launched a national X.25
X.25
X.25 is an ITU-T standard protocol suite for packet switched wide area network communication. An X.25 WAN consists of packet-switching exchange nodes as the networking hardware, and leased lines, Plain old telephone service connections or ISDN connections as physical links...

 data service, Uninet. To enter the long-distance voice market, United Telecom acquired ISACOMM
ISACOMM
ISA Communications Services, Inc. was a long-distance telephone company headquartered in Atlanta. It was the first telephone company to offer a virtual network service to corporations and the first to offer codec-based videoconferencing services...

 in 1981 and US Telephone in 1984.

Sprint

Southern Pacific Communications Company (SPCC), a unit of the Southern Pacific Railroad
Southern Pacific Railroad
The Southern Pacific Transportation Company , earlier Southern Pacific Railroad and Southern Pacific Company, and usually simply called the Southern Pacific or Espee, was an American railroad....

, began providing long-distance telephone service shortly after the Execunet II decision late in 1978. The Railroad had an extensive microwave communications system along its rights of way
Right-of-way (railroad)
A right-of-way is a strip of land that is granted, through an easement or other mechanism, for transportation purposes, such as for a trail, driveway, rail line or highway. A right-of-way is reserved for the purposes of maintenance or expansion of existing services with the right-of-way...

 used for internal communications. In 1972, they began selling surplus time on that system to corporations for use as their own Private Line Network, thereby circumventing AT&T
AT&T
AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications corporation headquartered in Whitacre Tower, Dallas, Texas, United States. It is the largest provider of mobile telephony and fixed telephony in the United States, and is also a provider of broadband and subscription television services...

's then-monopoly on public telephony, later expanding to fiber optic cables laid along those same rights of way subsequent to the Execunet II decision late in 1978. Prior attempts at offering long distance service were not approved by the Federal Communications Commission
Federal Communications Commission
The Federal Communications Commission is an independent agency of the United States government, created, Congressional statute , and with the majority of its commissioners appointed by the current President. The FCC works towards six goals in the areas of broadband, competition, the spectrum, the...

, though the company's fax
Fax
Fax , sometimes called telecopying, is the telephonic transmission of scanned printed material , normally to a telephone number connected to a printer or other output device...

 service (SpeedFAX) had been permitted. SPC was headquartered in Burlingame, California
Burlingame, California
Burlingame is a city in San Mateo County, California. It is located on the San Francisco Peninsula and has a significant shoreline on San Francisco Bay. The city is named after diplomat Anson Burlingame. It is renowned for its many surviving examples of Victorian architecture, its affluence, and...

 (where Sprint still maintains a technology lab on Adrian Ct.).

As mentioned above, SPCC was only permitted to provide Private Line service and not switched services. When MCI Communications
MCI Communications
MCI Communications Corp. was an American telecommunications company that was instrumental in legal and regulatory changes that led to the breakup of the AT&T monopoly of American telephony and ushered in the competitive long-distance telephone industry. It was headquartered in Washington,...

 released EXECUNET, SPCC went to court with the FCC to get the right to offer switched services. The reason for the contest was to name the new switched service.

The SPRINT service was first marketed to six metropolitan areas, New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

, Boston
Boston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...

, Philadelphia, Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...

, San Diego and Anaheim. The switches were located in Los Angeles and New York. A customer, required to have a Private Line connection to one of these switches in order to use the service, paid an access fee per Private Line. The customer was then billed at 2.6 cents per tenth of a minute increment.

Southern Pacific Communications became part of GTE
GTE
GTE Corporation, formerly General Telephone & Electronics Corporation was the largest independent telephone company in the United States during the days of the Bell System....

 in 1982 under the name GTE Sprint. GTE had previously acquired a national X.25
X.25
X.25 is an ITU-T standard protocol suite for packet switched wide area network communication. An X.25 WAN consists of packet-switching exchange nodes as the networking hardware, and leased lines, Plain old telephone service connections or ISDN connections as physical links...

 provider, Telenet
Telenet
Telenet was a commercial packet switched network which went into service in 1974. It was the first packet-switched network service that was available to the general public. Various commercial and government interests paid monthly fees for dedicated lines connecting their computers and local...

, in 1979.

In 1986, GTE Sprint was merged with GTE Telenet, US Telecom, Uninet, and ISACOMM to form US Sprint. This was a partnership owned by GTE and United Telecom. In 1989 United Telecom purchased controlling interest in US Sprint. In 1991 United Telecom completed its acquisition of US Sprint. That same year United Telecom changed its name to Sprint due in large part to the increased brand recognition of Sprint, as a result of the successful Candice Bergen
Candice Bergen
Candice Patricia Bergen is an American actress and former fashion model.She is known for starring in two TV series, as the title character on the situation comedy Murphy Brown , for which she won five Emmy Awards and two Golden Globe Awards; and as Shirley Schmidt on the comedy-drama Boston Legal...

 "Dime Lady" advertisement campaign.

In 1983, United Telecom's Telespectrum began offering cellular telephone services in United's territories. In 1988 Telespectrum was sold to Centel for $763 million to fund United's purchase of an additional 30% of US Sprint. This purchase gave United operational control of US Sprint.

In 1993, Sprint merged with Centel, which allowed Sprint to provide local service in a total of 18 states and put them back in the wireless business.

In late 1994 and early 1995, Sprint via Sprint Spectrum (a joint venture between Sprint and several cable companies) acquired near nationwide PCS spectrum. Later in 1995 the company began to offer wireless service under the Sprint PCS brand.

On October 5, 1999, Sprint and MCI WorldCom announced a $129 billion merger agreement between the two companies. The deal would have been the largest corporate merger in history at the time. However, the deal did not go through because of pressure from the United States Department of Justice
United States Department of Justice
The United States Department of Justice , is the United States federal executive department responsible for the enforcement of the law and administration of justice, equivalent to the justice or interior ministries of other countries.The Department is led by the Attorney General, who is nominated...

 and the European Union
European Union
The European Union is an economic and political union of 27 independent member states which are located primarily in Europe. The EU traces its origins from the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic Community , formed by six countries in 1958...

 on concerns of it creating a monopoly.

In 2003], Sprint began recombining their local telecom, long distance, wireline, and wireless business units into a new company, marketing the combined company as "One Sprint." In April 2004, the separately traded wireless tracking stock
Tracking stock
Tracking stock or targeted stock are specialized equity offerings issued by a company that is based on the operations of a wholly owned subsidiary of a diversified firm. Therefore, the tracking stock will be traded at a price related to the operations of the specific division of the company being...

, "PCS," was absorbed into the New York Stock Exchange
New York Stock Exchange
The New York Stock Exchange is a stock exchange located at 11 Wall Street in Lower Manhattan, New York City, USA. It is by far the world's largest stock exchange by market capitalization of its listed companies at 13.39 trillion as of Dec 2010...

 (NYSE) "FON" ticker symbol, Sprint's former ticker symbol. (FON stood for "Fiber Optic Network," which was Sprint's bragging right, but was also a homophone of the word "phone"). This was challenged in many lawsuits by Sprint PCS shareholders claiming the stock was devalued through the ratio of 1 share of PCS stock for 1/2 share of FON stock. Sprint agreed to settle with the shareholders for $57.5 million.

Merger with Nextel and Embarq Spinoff

Sprint and Nextel Corporation merged to form Sprint Nextel
Sprint Nextel
Sprint Nextel Corporation is an American telecommunications company based in Overland Park, Kansas. The company owns and operates Sprint, the third largest wireless telecommunications network in the United States, with 53.4 million customers, behind Verizon Wireless and AT&T Mobility...

 Corporation. The local operations were spun off in 2006 to become Embarq.

Acquisition by CenturyTel

On October 27, 2008, Embarq announced that it would be acquired by Monroe, Louisiana
Monroe, Louisiana
Monroe is a city in and the parish seat of Ouachita Parish, Louisiana, United States. As of the 2000 census, the city had a total population of 53,107, making it the eighth largest city in Louisiana. A July 1, 2007, United States Census Bureau estimate placed the population at 51,208, but 51,636...

-based CenturyTel, Inc. in an all-stock transaction valued at $11.6 billion, including the assumption of $5.8 billion in Embarq's debt. CenturyTel's CEO Glen Post became CEO of the combined company. On June 2, 2009, CenturyTel and Embarq announced that the combined entity would be called CenturyLink
CenturyLink
CenturyLink, Inc. is a United States telecommunications firm, headquartered in Monroe, Louisiana. The company, founded as Central Telephone & Electronics Corporation in 1968, later changed its name to Century Telephone Enterprises, Inc. in 1971, and then was called CenturyTel, Inc. from 1999 to 2010...

. The acquisition was completed on July 1, 2009.

Former Coverage Area

Embarq's coverage territory included that of the former ILEC companies of Carolina Telephone & Telegraph
Carolina Telephone & Telegraph
Carolina Telephone and Telegraph Company is a local telephone operating company, part of CenturyLink.The company was originally an independent company, but was purchased by United Telecom and merged with the United Telephone System of North Carolina, becoming a local operating company of Sprint...

, United Telephone Company, and Centel
Centel
Centel Corporation was an American telecommunications company, with primary interests in providing basic telephone service, cellular phone service and cable television service. It was founded in 1900 as an electric company....

. Embarq provided its local service in 19 states.

Products

Embarq focused on sales of four strategic products: telephone service, high-speed internet, and DISH Network satellite TV. Embarq offers bundled services to customers, with the convenience of one monthly bill and provides discounts to customers for adding additional services.

Embarq telephone service was a traditional Plain-old telephone system (POTS
Plain old telephone service
Plain old telephone service is the voice-grade telephone service that remains the basic form of residential and small business service connection to the telephone network in many parts of the world....

). Common offerings included features such as caller id, call waiting, 3-way calling, call forwarding, voice mail, and anonymous call rejection.

Embarq offered many long distance plans, including available unlimited domestic direct-dialed calling.

Depending on market and geographical region, Embarq offered several technologies under the high-speed internet name. Embarq covered the majority of their territory with ADSL at speeds of 768 kbit/s, 1.5 Mbit/s, 3.0 Mbit/s, or 5.0 Mbit/s as line conditions allow. In September 2007 Embarq began offering 10.0 Mbit/s to customers in Las Vegas. Beginning in January 2008, Embarq released the 10 Mbit/s tier across their entire footprint. Additional markets, such as parts of Las Vegas, Nevada
Las Vegas, Nevada
Las Vegas is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Nevada and is also the county seat of Clark County, Nevada. Las Vegas is an internationally renowned major resort city for gambling, shopping, and fine dining. The city bills itself as The Entertainment Capital of the World, and is famous...

, North Carolina
North Carolina
North Carolina is a state located in the southeastern United States. The state borders South Carolina and Georgia to the south, Tennessee to the west and Virginia to the north. North Carolina contains 100 counties. Its capital is Raleigh, and its largest city is Charlotte...

 and Florida
Florida
Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...

 are serviced through fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP).

Embarq had and established partnership with EchoStar-owned DISH Network
Dish Network
Dish Network Corporation is the second largest pay TV provider in the United States, providing direct broadcast satellite service—including satellite television, audio programming, and interactive television services—to 14.337 million commercial and residential customers in the United States. Dish...

 and offered a comprehensive lineup of DISH services to its customers. Discounts were available when eligible DISH programming is bundled with other qualifying Embarq products. In addition to the DISH Network partnership, Embarq also planned to test a TV service (tentatively called Embarq TV) in the near future. Details were scarce, but the service was rumored to have been an IPTV
IPTV
Internet Protocol television is a system through which television services are delivered using the Internet protocol suite over a packet-switched network such as the Internet, instead of being delivered through traditional terrestrial, satellite signal, and cable television formats.IPTV services...

 fiber-to-the-node service similar to AT&T
AT&T
AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications corporation headquartered in Whitacre Tower, Dallas, Texas, United States. It is the largest provider of mobile telephony and fixed telephony in the United States, and is also a provider of broadband and subscription television services...

's U-verse
U-Verse
AT&T U-verse is a registered service mark under which AT&T offers Internet access, television, and telephone services in various parts of the United States. It began in 2008 to serve mostly residences and small businesses in urban and suburban areas.-Services:...

. Testing was completed and Embarq/CenturyLink rolled out IPTV to its customer base in Jefferson City, MO. IPTV rolled out to Jefferson City, MO in October 2009. CenturyTel is providing its IPTV feed to the Jefferson City switching office from its service in Columbia, MO.

Embarq provided wireless phone service only for business accounts; they closed residential wireless business. Embarq provided business wireless phone service throughout much of its territory. Embarq operated as a Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO) for Sprint PCS. Embarq utilized the CDMA band, and their handsets connect primarily to Sprint PCS towers. However, Embarq handsets were also capable of roaming onto CDMA networks from other carriers.

Embarq DSL customers were offered free Earthlink
EarthLink
EarthLink , is an Internet service provider headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. It claims 1.94 million subscribers.- Business :EarthLink provides a variety of Internet connection types, including dial-up, DSL, satellite, and cable. Both dial-up and high speed Internet access are available...

 services until the formation of Myembarq.com. In 2007, Embarq customers were required to switch to Myembarq and Embarqmail.

Criticisms

Embarq previously worked with NebuAd
NebuAd
NebuAd was an American online advertising company based in Redwood City, California, with offices in New York and London and was funded by the investment companies Sierra Ventures and Menlo Ventures....

, a behavioral targeting
Behavioral targeting
Behavioral targeting is a technique used by online publishers and advertisers to increase the effectiveness of their campaigns.Behavioral targeting uses information collected on an individual's web-browsing behavior, such as the pages they have visited or the searches they have made, to select...

 advertising company to track customers' internet browsing habits. The goal was to deliver relevant ads based on browsing history. This has raised several legal and privacy concerns, along with the other internet providers using NebuAd and related services such as Charter Communications
Charter Communications
Charter Communications is an American company providing cable television, high-speed Internet, and telephone services to more than 4.7 million customers in 25 states. By revenues, it is the fourth-largest cable operator in the United States, behind Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and Cox Communications...

 and WOW!. Embarq's use of NebuAd prompted a letter from Congressman Edward Markey. Embarq responded to Congressman Markey's letter. Embarq later claimed that its participation with NebuAD was a trial, and that they were not currently using NebuAd for behavioral targeted advertising.
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