Verizon Inks $1 Billion Fiber Deal with Google

WASHINGTON, July 24, 2026 – Verizon recently signed a $1 billion deal to provide dark fiber connectivity to the tech company’s data centers, Verizon CEO Dan Schulman said Friday.

“We have other deals that we expect to announce by year-end that, taken together, are expected to be worth multiple billions of dollars in revenue over the next several years,” he said on the carrier’s earnings call.

He said the Google deal encompassed “several of our dark fiber routes for well in excess of a billion dollars.”

Schulman said the company was interested in cashing in on the tech industry’s high demand for connectivity as more and more data centers are built to support artificial intelligence models. He also said Verizon was retrofitting old copper central offices to be smaller “remote data centers” and had sold out a small trial.

Verizon also extended Schulman’s contract through 2028. It was supposed to end in 2027.

Broadband

Verizon reported more fixed wireless additions than fiber. The carrier notched 193,000 new fixed wireless subscribers for a total of 6.2 million, and 155,000 new fiber subscribers for a total of 10.9 million.

Fixed wireless additions missed Wall Street expectations (and were down from a year ago) but the fiber adds exceeded them.

Verizon’s fixed wireless additions have been slowing year-over-year for eleven quarters now, MoffettNathanson founder Craig Moffett wrote in an investor note. That’s not ideal for Verizon’s convergence ambitions, he wrote, given its fiber network is dwarfed by the cable giants.

Fiber adds were in line with a year ago, which Moffett wrote was “a bit of a disappointment” especially “in light of steady and rapid footprint expansion.”

Verizon is on pace to end the year with 32 million fiber passings, CFO Tony Skiadas said.

Mobile

Verizon added 184,000 postpaid phone lines in the second quarter, which Schulman said was the company’s best Q2 result in five years.

He was brought on last year to make the company leaner and better compete with AT&T and T-Mobile for wireless subscribers. It appears to be working, analysts wrote Friday.

Schulman touted the company’s new loyalty programs and simpler pricing plans, which the company launched earlier this year. The new plans were targeted at smaller accounts with one or two lines, and Schulman said net new accounts had been positive the last two months, a sign those customers were being won over.

But in the whole quarter, despite record postpaid phone line gains, the company lost 132,000 postpaid accounts. 

“It is certainly possible that Verizon’s ostensibly less promotional path has led to a loss of one-line accounts, de-averaging the total higher,” Moffett wrote. “Perhaps Verizon is gaining multi-line accounts even as it loses total accounts.”

But most likely is that lines are still being “aggressively” added to existing accounts, he wrote.

Regardless, the record postpaid phone adds was good enough news to outweigh lower-than-expected revenue of $33 billion, New Street Research analyst Vikash Harlalka wrote in an investor note.

The carrier’s postpaid success put “pressure on T-Mobile and AT&T to defend share rather than take it,” he wrote. “It also may suggest that cable's wireless push and cable's own broadband churn is where the next leg of competitive pressure is coming from, more than the traditional carrier-on-carrier fight.”

Satellite, MVNO

Schulman again reiterated Verizon was not interested in offering a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) deal to SpaceX, which would allow the satellite company to sell mobile service on Verizon’s infrastructure.

Analysts have pegged an MVNO as SpaceX’s only path to gaining a meaningful share of mobile subscribers with its direct-to-device service, given the difficulties of serving dense areas from space.

Verizon already has an MVNO deal with the cable giants, both of which count more than 10 million wireless subscribers they could not serve without the deal. Schulman and the other carriers aren’t eager to let another competitor into the fold.

There’s been speculation SpaceX could seek an MVNO by partnering or even outright buying Charter or Comcast to access their existing MVNO. Schulman said that wouldn't be a viable strategy.

“There is no backdoor to our MVNOs in any structure,” he said. “There’s no way that anyone can get access to our MVNOs.”

In terms of competition from SpaceX’s fixed broadband service, Schulman said he wasn’t worried. He said even suburban areas were dense enough that satellite service would struggle, while fixed wireless wouldn’t have a problem offering faster speeds.

“Satellite does have a [total addressable market], for sure. It’s probably somewhere between 6 and 8 million homes in the U.S.,” he said. “But it’s in primarily very rural geographies where building out a terrestrial network just is cost prohibitive.”