Verizon Subscriber Metrics Beat Expectations
The company increased its fiber expansion targets.
WASHINGTON, Jan. 30, 2026 – Verizon is targeting a fiber build pace of 2 million new passings in 2026 following its acquisition of Frontier.
That acquisition puts the company’s fiber footprint at more than 30 million locations, thanks to the more than 9 million Frontier had deployed. Verizon’s new fiber target is 40 million to 50 million passings “over the medium term,” recently appointed CEO Dan Schulman said on the company’s earnings call Friday.
That’s up from its previous 35 million to 40 million long-term goal. The company is eager to get more converged customers, those taking fixed and mobile broadband, and will have a new market to sell to in the newly acquired Frontier footprint.
“The more I look at convergence, the more optimistic I am that that’s going to be a major part of our future,” Schulman said. “So we want to double down on that.”
Verizon added 67,000 fiber subscribers in the fourth quarter, also beating analyst estimates, for a total of more than 7.7 million.
AT&T is also betting big on convergence reducing subscriber churn, and the cable giants are offering bundled service to help mitigate continued broadband subscriber losses.
On the fixed wireless front, Verizon added 319,000 new subscribers, again beating expectations. Still, the residential portion of that, 209,000, was lower than the same period one year earlier for the ninth straight quarter, MoffettNathanson founder Criag Moffett pointed out.
“That is perhaps surprising for a service offering that is ostensibly in its early stages and that has recently significantly expanded its footprint as the company has continued to make progress with its C-band rollout,” he wrote in an investor note. “But the decline was smaller than has been the recent trend.”
The carrier’s C-band deployment is 90 percent complete, Schulman said, and should be “substantially complete” by the end of the year. Verizon was the largest winner in the Federal Communications COmmission’s C-band auction in 2021, spending more than $45 billion.
Mobile
Schulman, a former PayPal CEO who had been on Verizon’s board before being named CEO in October, has focused on making the company leaner – Verizon cut more than 13,000 jobs in the fourth quarter, its largest layoff ever – and competing more fiercely for mobile subscribers.
The company did indeed handily beat Wall Street expectations on that front, posting 616,000 postpaid phone net adds compared to the 466,000 analysts had predicted.
While subscriber numbers were successful, New Street Research analyst David Barden said in a note the fourth quarter “was objectively not great” because financial metrics missed as Verizon spent on efforts to retain and attract new customers.
Postpaid phone churn was 1.02 percent, up year-over-year and higher than expected. That was offset by higher than expected gross additions.
Schulman said emphasized he wouldn't be unduly aggressive with promotions – some had feared a price war breaking out – and that the company was targeting the launch of a "new value proposition" in the first half of 2026
The company also updated its mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) contract with the cable giants. Both Comcast and Charter spoke positively about the deal on their earnings calls.
“We obviously can’t share any of the details, but each of us agrees the partnership is on very solid footing financially, operationally, and strategically,” Schulman said. “It is an accretive deal that ensures their customers remain on the best network.”
Schulman blamed recent phone subscriber losses on “raising our prices without corresponding value.”
“The number one rule of getting out of a hole is to stop digging,” he said. “We’re just not going to do that again.”
He said he wasn’t saying there would be no price increases, just that “we’re not going to capture temporary value, short-term value, at the risk of upsetting our customers and increasing our churn. Again, that defeats the purpose of long-term sustainable growth.”
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