Undersea cables carry more than 99% of international data traffic, serving as the core of global communication. Without steady terrestrial networks, businesses cannot connect across oceans with speed and reliability. Lumen Technologies, Inc. (LUMN Quick QuoteLUMN - Free Report) was recently selected to provide the terrestrial backhaul connectivity for the JUNO Trans-Pacific Cable System. The JUNO cable, operated by Seren Juno Network Co., Ltd., is poised to become the highest-capacity cable system connecting Japan and the United States, delivering transformative benefits for businesses and cloud providers on both sides of the Pacific. 

Following the transformative announcement, LUMN’s shares gained 6.75% in trading and closed the session at $4.11 on June 3, 2025.

Spanning 10,000 kilometers from Japan to the United States, the JUNO cable system uses cutting-edge Space Division Multiplexing technology, offering 20 fiber pairs and a total capacity of up to 350 terabits per second (Tbps). This robust bandwidth is designed to support the growing demand for high-speed, low-latency connectivity, particularly from data-intensive applications, such as artificial intelligence (AI), cloud computing, streaming, and real-time analytics.

Lumen has designed and deployed an advanced dark fiber backhaul solution tailored to JUNO’s ambitious needs. The company’s fiber backbone connects the U.S. cable landing station at Grover Beach, CA, to two major points of presence in San Jose and Los Angeles, crucial locations that support the U.S. digital economy. The dark fiber solution offered by Lumen provides custom, private network configurations for the JUNO system, allowing it greater control, security, and scalability. These capabilities are essential for the next generation of global enterprise services across a broad spectrum of industries.

LUMN Empowers the Future of AI & Innovation

The integration of JUNO’s trans-Pacific cable and Lumen’s U.S. terrestrial backbone acts as a next-generation digital bridge between Asia and North America, fostering innovation, boosting economic growth, and facilitating connection in an increasingly data-centric future. From Tokyo to San Jose, this infrastructure will be instrumental in enabling real-time collaboration, international data synchronization, cloud computing, and AI model training at a global scale.

This is likely to fuel faster time-to-market and reduced operational costs to improved user experiences and transformative capabilities for businesses in both Japan and the United States.

The growing demand for Lumen’s Private Connectivity Fabric (“PCF”) solutions, driven by the rapid proliferation of AI technologies, marks a promising and strategic development for the company. Lumen has secured $8.5 billion in PCF deals in 2024, driven by rising AI-driven demand for connectivity. As fiber capacity grows more valuable, major tech players like Microsoft, Amazon, Google Cloud, and Meta are turning to Lumen for network support. Demand is strong across both large and mid-sized enterprises, especially for Waves and IP services. These investments are set to boost future revenues and reinforce LUMN’s role in AI infrastructure.

For 2025, LUMN expects adjusted EBITDA of $3.2–$3.4 billion and capital spending of $4.1–$4.3 billion. EBITDA will dip from 2024 due to transformation costs, PCF startup expenses, and legacy declines, but is expected to rebound above $3.5 billion in 2026 and grow beyond. Free cash flow is projected in the range of $700-$900 million, with quarterly fluctuations due to PCF build timing.

LUMN’s Zacks Rank and Stock Price Performance

Currently, LUMN carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). In the past year, shares have surged 209% against the Zacks Diversified Communication Services industry’s decline of 3.5%.

Image Source: Zacks Investment Research

Stocks to Consider

Some better-ranked stocks from the broader technology space are Juniper Networks, Inc. (JNPR Quick QuoteJNPR - Free Report) , Arista Networks, Inc. (ANET Quick QuoteANET - Free Report) and Ubiquiti Inc. (UI Quick QuoteUI - Free Report) . JNPR presently sports a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), while ANET and UI carry a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy) each. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

Juniper is leveraging the 400-gig cycle to capture hyperscale switching opportunities inside the data center. The company is set to capitalize on the increasing demand for data center virtualization, cloud computing and mobile traffic packet/optical convergence. Juniper also introduced new features within the AI-driven enterprise portfolio that enable customers to simplify the rollout of their campus wired and wireless networks while bringing greater insight to network operators. In the last reported quarter, it delivered an earnings surprise of 4.88%.

Arista delivered a trailing four-quarter average earnings surprise of 11.82% and has a long-term growth expectation of 14.81%. Arista currently serves five verticals, namely cloud titans (customers that deploy more than one million servers), cloud specialty providers, service providers, financial services and the rest of the enterprise. It supplies products to a prestigious set of customers, including Fortune 500 global companies in markets such as cloud titans, enterprises, financials and specialty cloud service providers.

Ubiquiti’s effective management of its strong global network of more than 100 distributors and master resellers improved its visibility for future demand and inventory management techniques. In the last reported quarter, Ubiquiti delivered an earnings surprise of 33.3%. Its highly flexible global business model remains well-suited to adapt to the changing market dynamics to overcome challenges while maximizing growth.