We report dramatic improvements to the implanted‐planar buried‐heterostructure graded‐index separate confinement heterostructure (IPBH‐GRINSCH) laser in (AlGa)As/GaAs which produces low threshold current, continuous‐wave operation. Our process features significantly reduced fabrication complexity of high quality, index‐guided laser diodes compared to regrowth techniques and, in contrast to diffusion‐induced disordering, allows creation of self‐aligned, buried, blocking junctions by ion implantation. The improved single‐stripe IPBH‐GRINSCH lasers exhibit 39 mA threshold current, cw operation.