Policyband

Verizon CEO Sees Starlink, Amazon LEO Capped at 5 Million U.S. Subs within 10 Years

Meanwhile. New Street Research says rapidly growing Starlink doubled its global subscriber base in 2025, hitting 2.7 million U.S. customers and becoming a Top 10 ISP

Ted Hearn

May 14, 2026 — 10 min read

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LEOs: Wall Street is always asking a question like this: Can Elon Musk and Amazon CEO Andy Jassy stay irrational longer than the competition can stay solvent? Verizon CEO Dan Schulman bumped into this question in a way yesterday when he basically said he was not worried about Musk or Amazon, claiming the low‑Earth orbit broadband providers posed no serious threat to the company’s core business. Speaking Wednesday at MoffettNathanson’s Media, Internet & Communications Conference, Schulman said LEO broadband is “a really good complimentary service for a product,” but insisted it cannot match land‑based networks where the wireless industry makes its money. “They cannot compete in urban and suburban against the terrestrial network. And by the way, that’s where like 95% plus of the revenues are,” he said. (More after paywall)