WOW! Business Internet vs. CenturyLink: 5 Key Metrics Small Firms Should Compare

One dropped connection can drain a mid-size company more than $300,000 per hour in lost sales and recovery labor, according to the 2024 ITIC downtime survey. If you operate in the Midwest or Southeast, your choice usually narrows to two carriers: WOW! Business Internet and CenturyLink Business. In the guide that follows, we’ll compare them across five make-or-break criteria—speed, uptime, pricing, support, and value-add extras—to show which provider keeps your business humming without overspending.

Why bandwidth and latency sit at the top of your checklist

Throughput and latency together determine how smoothly small businesses handle checkouts, calls, and cloud backups

Every cloud invoice you send, every Zoom call you host, and every overnight backup depends on two numbers: throughput, measured in megabits per second (Mbps), and round-trip latency, measured in milliseconds (ms).

• Speed drives revenue. According to Akamai, a 100 ms increase in page-load time can drop e-commerce conversions by 7 percent.
• Latency protects conversations. Cisco recommends keeping interactive video under 150 ms one-way latency to avoid choppy audio or frozen frames.

If download capacity dips, shoppers refresh a blank cart; if upload bandwidth lags, that 200 MB design file stalls in your outbox. When latency spikes, voices overlap and meetings derail.

In its bandwidth needs guide for small businesses, WOW! Business translates those problems into rough per-user numbers, such as about 4 Mbps for HD video calls and a few megabits for cloud backups and file sharing. That same checklist shows that a 10 to 15 person team that relies on video meetings and cloud apps often needs at least 150 to 250 Mbps of download capacity to stay responsive. In short, clean bandwidth plus low latency equals fast checkouts, happy clients, and billable hours that do not disappear while a screen loads.

Up next, we’ll compare WOW! and CenturyLink on those two yardsticks: first their advertised tiers, then their real-world results. The goal is to show which network keeps your team moving at full stride.

WOW! business tiers: what you get

The official WOW! business internet page lists three coax packages in most markets: 300/20 Mbps, 600/50 Mbps, and 1,000/50 Mbps download/upload, priced at roughly $80, $90, and $130 per month on a one-year agreement in 2025.

WOW Business Internet coax tiers and limited fiber options, mapped to real small business workloads

• 300 Mbps keeps a retail POS, up to five HD Zoom feeds, and routine cloud docs in the green.
• 600 Mbps adds breathing room for nightly image backups, off-site camera streams, and a dozen Slack huddles without buffering.
• 1 Gbps (1,000 Mbps) lets marketing teams move 4K video or multi-GB CAD files while everyone else keeps working.

Upload headroom tops out at 50 Mbps on cable, so design studios pushing multi-gig renders will hit the ceiling upstream before they touch the 1 Gbps download limit.

WOW!’s new fiber builds raise service to symmetrical 2–5 Gbps in select Florida and Alabama zones—now under 10 percent of its footprint. For the remaining coax areas, treat 1 Gbps down / 50 Mbps up as the everyday benchmark.

CenturyLink’s two-track story: DSL drag or fiber lift

CenturyLink sells two very different business pipes:

Technology	Typical speeds*	Monthly price	Contract	Data cap
Simply Unlimited DSL	Up to 100/10 Mbps (location-dependent)	$55	None	None
Quantum Fiber 500	500/500 Mbps	$50	None	None
Quantum Fiber 940	940/940 Mbps	$75	None	None

*Advertised rates; real-world DSL throughput falls with distance from the node, sometimes to 20 Mbps or less.

On copper DSL, an overnight 2 GB QuickBooks backup can saturate the line and stall your POS terminals. Move to Quantum Fiber and that same file leaves your drive in under a minute, while interactive apps enjoy sub-20 ms latency—well below the 50 ms target Quantum Fiber promotes for low-lag conferencing.

CenturyLink’s DSL and Quantum Fiber represent two very different performance levels for small business internet

Pricing is month to month and equipment is included, so your bill stays flat. There’s no year-two jump or modem-rental surprise. Availability is binary, though: if your address isn’t fiber-ready, WOW!’s coax will usually outrun CenturyLink’s DSL.

Why 99 percent isn’t always enough

Speed may impress during a demo, but reliability pays the bills. At 99 percent uptime (“two nines”), a circuit can sit dark for 87.6 hours per year. Even one hour can cost mid-size firms more than $300,000 in lost revenue, according to ITIC’s 2024 downtime survey.

Compare the math:

Small differences in uptime—99% vs 99.9% vs 99.99%—translate into big differences in yearly downtime

Uptime target	Maximum outage per year	Equivalent per month
99.0 percent	87.6 hours	7.3 hours
99.9 percent	8.8 hours	44 minutes
99.99 percent	52.6 minutes	4.4 minutes

We judge providers on two facts: 1) the uptime promised in their service-level agreements, and 2) how real customers describe outage frequency and repair time after install. A glossy claim means little if no crew arrives when a backhoe cuts fiber at 8 pm.

WOW! everyday uptime

WOW! coax markets stay quiet in the best way: outages are uncommon. Only its dedicated fiber and Ethernet lines carry a formal 99.9 percent uptime SLA, yet quarterly investor briefs show coax markets hitting at least 99.2 percent actual availability in 2024.

The stability comes from sealed, weather-resistant cabling. Rain-soaked splice boxes and long copper loops—the classic DSL pains—are not part of the design. When a construction crew cuts a feeder, WOW!’s network center alerts local techs, and most business tickets close in under 45 minutes.

For a retail shop or ten-person office, that works out to fewer than seven downtime hours per year, keeping registers, calendar apps, and Wi-Fi calling online almost every business day. WOW! never promises “five nines,” but in day-to-day use it delivers the quiet reliability most small firms want: an internet link you can forget about.

CenturyLink’s mixed track record

CenturyLink’s service lives in two worlds:

Technology	SLA / advertised uptime	Typical repair time*	Common failure points
Quantum Fiber	99.9 percent network availability	Fewer than 4 hours	Construction cuts, regional power loss
DSL (copper)	None beyond “best effort”	12–24 hours†	Water-logged splice boxes, long loops

*Based on CenturyLink support knowledge-base targets; actual times vary by market.

†Users on r/centurylink report copper repairs that stretch into multiple days in some 2025 outages.

Passive glass strands handle rain, electrical noise, and neighborhood congestion well, so fiber tickets are uncommon and often close the same day. DSL tells another story: aging copper can corrode, trap moisture, or sit too far from the central office. The result is night-time speed swings and occasional sync drops that may last hours.

Bottom line: location decides your fate. In a Quantum Fiber zone, CenturyLink performs reliably. On legacy copper, outages and slowdowns are frequent enough that many owners keep an LTE hotspot for backup, or they opt for WOW!’s coax instead.

WOW! low-entry, high-exit curve

WOW! grabs attention with deep first-year promos. Its 600/50 Mbps coax plan lists at $89.99 per month on a 12-month contract, and 1 Gbps lists at $129.99, both with free install and a three-month modem credit.

Month 13 is the pivot. Promotional pricing ends and bills rise by about 30 percent to the standard rate (for example, 600 Mbps becomes $119.99). A modem rental of $14 per month applies unless you bring your own gear. Cancel before the term is up and WOW! charges an early-termination fee of $10 to $20 for every remaining month.

For many shops, the math still works. A restaurant planning a renovation next spring pockets the up-front savings, then renegotiates. A start-up chasing new funding values predictable year-one operating costs. Just circle Month 13 on the calendar so the steeper invoice does not surprise your finance team.

CenturyLink straight-line approach

CenturyLink posts its rates plainly and keeps them there:

Plan	Speed (symmetrical)	Monthly rate	Contract	Data cap
Quantum Fiber 940	Up to 940 Mbps	$75	None	None
Quantum Fiber 500	Up to 500 Mbps	$50	None	None
Simply Unlimited DSL	Up to 100/10 Mbps	$55	None	None

The price you see is the price you keep. CenturyLink labels the offer “Price for Life,” meaning the rate never rises. Service runs month to month, so you can cancel any day and pay only for the days used; no early-termination fees apply.

WOW’s first-year promo curve jumps at month 13, while CenturyLink-style Price for Life stays flat over 24 months

Extras add value. A Wi-Fi gateway ships free, standard install is waived, and there are no data caps or throttling clauses. Over 24 months the 940-Mbps fiber bill totals about $1,800, almost identical to WOW!’s promo-then-standard 1-Gig spend. With CenturyLink you skip the “rate-hike” calendar alert because the invoice stays flat for as long as you keep service.

WOW! keeps humans on the line 24/7

Need help at 2 am? WOW! Business routes calls to a U.S.-based team that answers around the clock: no chatbots, no outsourced triage.

Independent surveys support that promise. In the 2024 American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) study, the “All Others” cable-ISP group that includes WOW! scored 70, two points above the broadband average of 68 and eight points above CenturyLink’s 62. Customers mention short hold times, clear phone menus, and field techs who leave personal numbers for follow-ups.

For a ten-person shop without in-house IT, that responsiveness is gold. A cashier can call during a lunch rush, a manager can ring after hours, and both reach someone who treats every lost minute like lost revenue.

CenturyLink support: limited hours, lower scores

CenturyLink runs a dedicated small-business support line, but published hours are 6 am–10 pm CT on weekdays and 8 am–6 pm CT on weekends. Reddit threads from DSL users report that overnight trouble tickets often sit until the morning shift, adding six to eight hours to some outages.

Hold times can stretch, too. J.D. Power’s 2024 North-Central study ranks CenturyLink last among major providers for phone satisfaction at 676 out of 1,000.

The broader data confirm the gap. The 2024 ACSI puts CenturyLink at 62 out of 100, eight points behind the 70 score posted by the “All Others” cable group that includes WOW! and six points below the ISP average of 68.

Quantum Fiber customers rarely need help because the line is stable and symmetrical uploads reduce issues. Legacy DSL users report multiple truck rolls and billing misfires, so for urgent, after-hours fixes, WOW! still answers faster and resolves problems sooner.

WOW! bundle mindset

WOW! positions internet as the hub for a full office stack. Pair a coax plan with Business Voice and your invoice drops by $10 per month; the discount applies to any single voice line on speeds 300 Mbps and higher.

Need TV for a waiting room? Commercial-grade video can ride the same line, eliminating an extra truck roll. New customers also receive a 60-day money-back guarantee on standard business internet—a rare safety net if the service is not a match.

Upgrades are one call away: static IPv4 blocks start at $10 per month, “Whole-Business Wi-Fi” adds managed mesh access points, and dedicated fiber circuits scale to 10 Gbps with a 99.99 percent SLA for sites that host servers or move large media files.

For owners who prefer to keep phone, Wi-Fi, and internet on one invoice while testing the service risk-free, WOW!’s bundle menu offers a straightforward path.

CenturyLink built-in value

CenturyLink keeps things simple. Every small-business plan ships with free equipment and free professional install, so there is no $14 modem rental or activation fee lurking in the agreement. Static IPv4 blocks start around $15 per month, and you can add voice or DIRECTV for Business through partner programs, yet the base internet bill stays the same. Because service is month to month, you can cancel any day without early-termination fees.

Conclusion

Need one invoice that folds phone, TV, or a 60-day satisfaction window into the deal? WOW! meets that checklist. Prefer a flat rate with hardware included that stays put year after year? CenturyLink offers the cleaner option. Both providers can add static IPs or scale to enterprise-grade fiber, so the choice comes down to whether bundle savings or included hardware matters more over a multi-year horizon.