Verizon Fixed Wireless Adds Continue to Slow

WASHINGTON, Oct. 29, 2025 – Verizon added 261,000 fixed wireless subscribers in the third quarter, fewer than Wall Street expected and down more than 28 percent from the same time last year. 

The wireless carrier now counts nearly 5.4 million fixed wireless subscribers, compared to nearly 8 million at T-Mobile and nearly 1.3 million at AT&T. The pace of Verizon’s growth has slowed this year, though, while the other two carriers continue to post record additions and outpace expectations.

Of the total additions, 121,000 were residential customers. That’s the lowest since early 2022, shortly after the service was launched, MoffettNathanson founder Craig Moffett noted in an investor report.

Moffett said the slowdown was “a reason for concern,” given the industry’s effort to offer as many fixed and mobile broadband bundles as possible. Newly appointed Verizon CEO Dan Schulman said on the company’s earnings call he was “a very big believer in convergence,” noting that the company observed a churn rate nearly 40 percent lower for customers with both fiber and a mobile line.

Verizon recently announced it was acquiring fixed wireless provider Starry, which has proprietary technology for serving apartment buildings and other multi-dwelling units. The carrier has itself been working to roll out a fixed wireless product for MDUs.

Fixed wireless service from the 5G providers has been competing strongly against the cable industry. New Street Research analyst David Barden said in a note that the weaker-than-expected additions for Verizon were “modestly encouraging” for cable.

On the fiber front, Verizon added 61,000 subscribers, beating analyst estimates and posting its best number in two years. That brings the total to nearly 7.7 million.

Verizon is still on track to pass 650,000 new fiber locations in 2025, executives said. The company is planning to reach 35-40 million passings in the long term after its $20 billion acquisition of Frontier.

Schulman said the purchase would bring the company’s total footprint to about 29 million fiber passings, and Frontier reported 8.8 million such passings Tuesday, implying about 20.2 million current passings for Verizon.

The carrier’s purchase of Frontier and its fiber footprint is still expected to close in the first quarter of 2026, Verizon CFO Tony Skiadas said. The deal has secured federal approval and approval in most of the necessary states.

California has been a source of friction so far, but the companies have reached settlements in an attempt to assuage concerns over the transaction, and the state’s utility regulator said it could reach a decision soon enough to avoid disrupting the companies’ timeline.

The company also announced a deal Monday with Tillman, which would see Verizon offer its broadband service on Tillman infrastructure. The companies didn’t disclose a customer target for the deal.

Schulman didn’t offer specifics on his plan for the company’s future fiber builds. He said “we’ll continue to invest appropriately and aggressively in that expansion.”

New CEO plans

The company added 44,000 postpaid phone lines, but lost 176,000 postpaid accounts, much worse than the same time last year. A weaker quarter was expected by Wall Street, but that led to concerns that Schulman, abruptly brought on to reverse the company’s fortunes, would be extra aggressive with price cuts and promotions.

He sought to assure investors Wednesday that he wouldn’t start a price war.

“There’s no reason for us to be irrationally aggressive to win our fair share out there,” he said.

Instead he said the carrier would try to “grow by retention” and redouble efforts to keep customers around and lower churn.

Moffett wasn’t entirely convinced, saying the only levers for near-term customer growth were price and promotions.

“With no subscriber growth and now no [average revenue per user] growth either, the market’s nagging fear that competitive intensity is about to get worse precisely because Verizon has no other alternative seems to us to be well-founded,” Moffett wrote, “(despite Schulman’s adamant protests on this morning’s call that he will not resort to lowering prices or sweetening promotions to fix what is broken about Verizon).”

In a Wednesday morning note before the call, Barden said the language in Verizon’s earning release suggested it really would not “‘light the neighborhood on fire’ in which it owns the largest house,” which he said could be positive for the other major carriers.

AT&T stock was down about 2.1 percent Wednesday morning, and T-Mobile was down about 2.7 percent. Verizon was up about 2.3 percent.