CenturyTel’s purchase of Embarq, announced last October, is now complete, and the combined entity has taken a new name: CenturyLink.

The stock deal was worth about $11.6 billion, including CenturyTel’s assumption of about $5.8 billion of Embarq’s debt. Embarq was Sprint’s landline operation, spun out in May 2006 (story here).

The combination operates in 33 states, largely in rural markets and small- to mid-size cities. It will have approximately 7.5 million access lines, 2.1 million broadband customers and approximately 440,000 video subscribers.

When the deal was announced, CenturyTel said it expected the deal to result in $400 million in savings over three years, mostly through layoffs and reduced overhead.