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Comment by gtdawg | Hacker News Reader

They purchased Level(3) who already previously owned Global Crossing, Savvis Video and Genuity, among other acquisitions.

The Level(3) name was much more memorable in the carrier/enterprise/ISP field and it feels like they are starting from scratch on brand recognition, because as you said, lots of people haven't heard of Centurylink before.

Edit: And as noted by the thread "CenturyLink is totally shady.", Centurylink's retail consumer reputation is quite tarnished (as are most large consumer ISP companies) and mixing that reputation with Level(3) was a bad decision, IMO.

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What? Level3 was huge as a fiber ISP at the enterprise level, but Qwest/CenturyLink has been a huge phone service/ISP in the west since the breakup of Ma Bell. They own the naming rights to the Seahawks's stadium.

They have huge brand recognition in the West, though you're right, little of it's positive. I remember a cover article in my sleepy mountain town's alt/leftist newspaper titled 'Qworst' when I was growing up.

Full disclosure I work at a shop that switched to CL fiber (e.g. Layer3) per my recommendation on coming on. The service quality/uptime is top-notch but the sales/PM process has left a lot to be desired.

True, I did forget about the Qwest acquisition from Centurylink because that was so long ago (to my memory). I do remember the days when routing problems and outages with Qwest in public forums always led to the 'Qworst' name popping up.

I also work for a shop that I recommended Level(3) DIA fiber/Layer 3 services on about 1.5 years ago. Now that it's CL, not much has changed on service or reliability.

The sales people however are still trying to expand their grasp into our organization so it's always a battle there.

I had CenturyLink service (in Phoenix) for years before I had ever heard of Level(3). I'd be really surprised if Level(3) has more brand recognition among the general public than CenturyLink does.

On the retail, general consumer side: Level(3) doesn't have much of any brand recognition. That's why I said "carrier/enterprise/ISP".

On the business side, it has quite a bit of premium name recognition which seems to be getting thrown away from the way they are being swallowed up.

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