Verizon Expands Reach with Fiber, FWA, and Millimeter Wave Technology

WASHINGTON, Nov. 21, 2024 – Verizon has doubled down on plans to expand its fiber and fixed wireless access footprint to over 100 million homes, bolstered by a plan to rollout cutting-edge technology tailored for multiple dwelling units.

Verizon CFO Tony Skiadas outlined the company’s vision for sustainable growth at the Morgan Stanley European Technology, Media & Telecom Conference in Barcelona on Thursday.

For the third quarter of 2024, Verizon “had a good balance of both customer and financial growth," Skiadas said. “We saw 239,000 postpaid phone net ads, and 389,000 broadband subs. We [also met] our FWA target of 4–5 million subscribers 15 months early."

The company projects to double its fixed wireless access subscribers to 8–9 million by 2028, Skiadas said, by expanding coverage from 60 million to 90 million passings within the same timeframe.

On the fiber side, Verizon has 7 million subscribers and aims to grow its footprint to 30 million premises passed by 2028. This goal is bolstered by the $20 billion all-cash acquisition of Frontier Communications, a deal expected to add approximately 9–10 million fiber passings to Verizon's broadband network.

“For the Frontier deal, it was a good build-versus-buy analysis for us,” Skiadas said. “We could not build 10 million [fiber passings] in 18 months or two years. This was a good analysis of buying at very good economics, and we're happy to be on the other side of the shareholder vote. So the team is very much focused now on the regulatory approval process, which we said would take up to 18 months."

In addition to expanding its fiber footprint, Verizon plans to commercially launch advanced millimeter wave solutions for apartment and office buildings, leveraging existing infrastructure for cost-effective and rapid deployment. “We are very excited about that,” Skiadas said, “using millimeter wave and existing assets that we have. That's really the driver of the [capex] increase for next year.”

With plans to continue developing and refining this technology throughout next year, the point-to-multipoint architecture will utilize Verizon’s millimeter wave spectrum holdings, owned fiber infrastructure, and edge infrastructure.

This MDU solution is one of three key drivers contributing to Verizon’s anticipated increase in capital expenditures for 2025, which are projected to reach $17.5–$18.5 billion.

The other drivers include Verizon’s plan to utilize C-Band spectrum to accelerate the deployment of its mid-band 5G network, and the company’s plans to increase its fiber build rate to 650,000 new premises annually starting in 2025.