Verizon CFO Sees AI as Next Revenue Stream
Skiadas unveils plan to repurpose central offices for hosting AI workloads.
WASHINGTON, Sept. 4, 2025 – Verizon CFO Tony Skiadas unveiled plans Thursday to repurpose the carrier’s wireline footprint to support artificial intelligence workloads.
“Emerging right now is what we call AI Connect,” Skiadas detailed. “Reimagining [Verizon’s] wireline assets to deliver AI workloads at scale.”
He pointed to the company’s existing infrastructure as the foundation: “[With] the dark fiber, lit fiber, power space and cooling that we have ready in our portfolio, we have the central offices to deliver AI at scale,” he said, speaking at Citi’s 2025 Global Technology, Media and Telecommunications Conference.
“This is an emerging opportunity for us. We see a lot of demand,” Skiadas said.
Asked about the company’s wireless buildout, Skiadas said 80 percent to 90 percent of Verizon’s wireless cell sites were expected to be C-band enabled by year-end, as it leverages the $45 billion C-band licenses it bought in 2021.
Skiadas described the mid-band frequencies as a dual-use asset: “The primary use case for C-band is mobility, and a secondary use case is the optionality for fixed wireless,” he said.
Once a C-band site is live, Verizon can flip on fixed wireless access (FWA) as a secondary use. That means broadband growth was basically riding for free on top of the mobile build.
Fixed wireless brought in more than $700 million in revenue in the second quarter alone and Verizon added roughly 600,000 FWA subscribers in the first half of the year, Skiadas said.
On the fiber side, Skiadas said its pending Frontier acquisition had already secured regulatory approvals in eight of the 13 states needed, along with FCC and DOJ clearance.
The deal, expected to close by the first quarter of 2026, was projected to yield at least $500 million in operating synergies within three years, Skiadas said. Verizon sees the deal as a chance to upgrade legacy networks and accelerate fiber deployment.
“As we get closer to closing the deal, we'll come back on what the build pace will look like in the combined footprint going forward,” he shared.
Asked whether Verizon was eyeing EchoStar’s spectrum assets as AT&T has, Skiadas said the carrier was satisfied with its current holdings but added, “Spectrum is the lifeblood of the wireless industry… if there are opportunities for value creation at the right price, we’ll continue to be opportunistic.”
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