Products and Services Revenues

We are an integrated communications company engaged primarily in providing an array of communications services, including local voice, broadband, private line (including special access), network access, Ethernet, information technology, video and other ancillary services. We strive to maintain our customer relationships by, among other things, bundling our service offerings to provide our customers with a complete offering of integrated communications services.

Since the November 1, 2017 closing of CenturyLink's acquisition of us, our operations are integrated into and are reported as part of the segments of CenturyLink. CenturyLink's chief operating decision maker ("CODM") has become our CODM, but reviews our financial information on an aggregate basis only in connection with our quarterly and annual reports that we file with the Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC"). Otherwise, we do not provide our discrete financial information to the CODM on a regular basis. As such, we now have one reportable segment and we have reclassified our prior period results to conform to our current view.

Total revenue consists of:

• Core Network Services revenue from Internet Protocol ("IP") and data services; transport and fiber; local and enterprise voice services; colocation and data center services; and security services.

• Wholesale Voice Services revenue from sales to our carrier of long distance voice services.


•	Affiliate revenues.

Core Network Services revenue represents higher profit services and Wholesale Voice Services revenue represents lower profit services. Core Network Services revenue requires different levels of investment and focus and provides different contributions to our operating results than Wholesale Voice Services revenue. Management believes that growth in revenue from our Core Network Services is critical to the long-term success of our business. We also believe we must continue to effectively manage the profitability of the Wholesale Voice Services revenue. We believe performance in our communications business is best gauged by analyzing revenue changes in Core Network Services.

Core Network Services

IP and data services primarily include our Internet services, Virtual Private Network ("VPN"), Content Delivery Network ("CDN"), media delivery, Vyvx broadcast and Managed Services. Our IP and high speed IP service is high quality and is offered in a variety of capacities. Our VPN service permits businesses of any size to replace multiple networks with a single, cost-effective solution that greatly simplifies the converged transmission of voice, video, and data. This convergence to a single platform can be obtained without sacrificing the quality of service or security levels of traditional ATM and frame relay offerings. VPN service also permits customers to prioritize network application traffic so that high priority applications, such as voice and video, are not compromised in performance by the flow of low priority applications such as email.

Growth in transport (such as private line and wavelengths) and fiber revenue is largely dependent on increased demand for bandwidth services and available capital of companies requiring communications capacity for their own use or in providing capacity as a service provider to their customers. These expenditures may be in the form of monthly payments or, in the case of private line, wavelength or dark fiber services, either monthly payments or upfront payments. We are focused on providing end-to-end transport and fiber services to our customers to directly connect customer locations with a private network.

Voice services comprise a broad range of local and enterprise voice services using VoIP and traditional circuit switch based technologies, including VoIP enhanced local service, SIP Trunking, local inbound service, Primary Rate Interface service, long distance service and toll-free service. Our voice services also include our comprehensive suite of audio, Web and video collaboration services.

Colocation and data center services allow customers to place their network equipment and servers in suitable environments maintained by us with high-speed links providing on-net access to more than 60 countries. These services are secure, redundant and flexible to fit the varying needs of our customers. Services, which vary by location, include hosting network equipment used to transport high speed data and voice over our global network; providing managed IT services, installation, maintenance, storage and monitoring of enterprise services; and providing comprehensive IT outsource solutions.

Security Services can be used to enable customers to address the growing threat of cyber-attack and allow customers to create a secure network, safeguard brand value, enable business continuity, and avoid complexity and cost. Our Security Services include: Secure Access which provides secure and encrypted connectivity for mobile users or remote offices; Cloud and Premises based Managed Firewall and Unified Threat Management Services including Intrusion Prevention and Detection service and Web Content filtering; network-based Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Mitigation, which protects against Internet based DDoS attacks; and Security Consulting services for Governance, Risk Management and Compliance. Security Services are sold stand-alone or in conjunction with Data Services.

We believe a source of future incremental demand for our Core Network Services will be from customers that are seeking to distribute their feature rich content or video over the Internet. Revenue growth in this area is dependent on the continued increase in demand from customers and the pricing environment. An increase in the reliability and security of information transmitted over the Internet and declines in the cost to transmit data have resulted in increased utilization of e-commerce or Web-based services by businesses. Although the pricing for data services is currently relatively stable, the IP market is generally characterized by price compression and high unit growth rates depending upon the type of service. We have continued to experience price compression in the high-speed IP and voice services markets.

Wholesale Voice Services

We offer wholesale voice services that target large and existing markets. The revenue potential for wholesale voice services is large; however, pricing is expected to continue to decline over time as a result of the new low-cost IP and optical-based technologies. In addition, the market for wholesale voice services is being targeted by many competitors, several of which are larger and have more financial resources than us.

Our total revenues for our products and services consisted of the following categories:



	Successor		Predecessor
	Period Ended December 31, 2017		Period Ended October 31, 2017	Year Ended December 31, 2016	Year Ended December 31, 2015
	(Dollars in millions)
Core network services revenues	$	1,331	6,543	7,767	7,757
Wholesale voice services	60		327	406	473
Affiliate revenues	16		—	—	—
Total operating revenues	$	1,407	6,870	8,173	8,230

The following table presents operating revenues for the predecessor period ended October 31, 2017 and the successor period ended December 31, 2017 as well as total assets as of the successor date of December 31, 2017 by geographic region:



	Total Assets		Revenues
	Successor		Successor	Predecessor
	December 31, 2017		Period Ended December 31, 2017	Period Ended October 31, 2017
	(Dollars in millions)
North America	$	27,776	1,155	5,651
EMEA	1,192		128	607
Latin America	4,167		124	612
Total	$	33,135	1,407	6,870