en.Wedoany.com Reported - Wedoany News, Verizon CEO Dan Schulman stated clearly at the MoffettNathanson Media, Internet and Communications Conference this week that the company's target cap for fiber coverage is approximately 40 to 50 million, beyond which scale it will no longer be economically viable. This is the first time Schulman has publicly set a financial boundary for Verizon's fiber expansion, a judgment based on the company's internal cost data—Verizon supplies most of its fiber internally and has reached agreements with unions, giving it a clear grasp of its cost structure.
Schulman directly gave the reason for drawing the line at the conference: coverage beyond 40 to 50 million would enter more remote rural areas, where the gap between construction costs and expected returns makes further expansion difficult to justify. Verizon previously completed its $20 billion acquisition of Frontier Communications, with the transaction officially closing on January 20, 2026, adding approximately 7.2 million fiber access points for Verizon. As of the first quarter of 2026, Verizon's fiber network already covered over 30 million locations, with 127,000 net new fiber broadband customers added during the quarter. The company plans to increase total coverage to 40 to 50 million in the coming years, but Schulman's statement this time implies that this range is not only a mid-term target but also an economic boundary.
While setting the fiber coverage cap, Schulman provided a clear quantitative expectation for the revenue opportunities brought by AI infrastructure. He stated that hyperscale cloud providers, alternative cloud providers, and large enterprises are actively integrating Verizon's fiber and 5G assets to support their AI infrastructure layouts. These opportunities encompass data center connectivity and helping customers with training and inference, with potential revenues reaching billions of dollars. Schulman revealed that more related details are expected to be announced in the next three to six months. Verizon has launched a dedicated network product portfolio called AI Connect, packaging metro and long-haul fiber, 5G networks, edge computing nodes, and data center assets into an integrated connectivity solution for AI workloads. The company disclosed that AI Connect's sales funnel has reached $1 billion, with Google and Meta already purchasing its network capacity for AI workloads.
The business logic of AI Connect lies in repricing Verizon's existing physical assets. Verizon owns hundreds of data center sites across the U.S. with idle power, space, and cooling capacity, with available power at individual sites ranging from 2 to over 10 megawatts, plus 100 to 200 acres of undeveloped land, some of which is already planned for data center use. These assets were previously in a state of low utilization for a long time and are now being opened up to GPU cloud service providers and hyperscale enterprises through AI Connect. Managed service provider Vultr has signed on as a partner and will deploy GPU-as-a-service infrastructure in Verizon data centers, distributing computing power via Verizon's fiber network.
Schulman pointed out that Verizon is well-positioned in the AI infrastructure space. The company completed a 1.6Tbps fiber data transmission trial in March 2026, verifying the existing network's carrying capacity for AI training and inference workloads. On the edge inference side, Verizon is combining its dense metro fiber network with private 5G to provide enterprise customers with local inference latency of less than 10 milliseconds.
Structural changes are also occurring on the cost side. Verizon is executing an annual cost reduction plan of $5 billion, including cutting approximately 13,000 positions and accelerating the shutdown of its traditional copper network. Schulman stated that decommissioning copper not only reduces maintenance costs but also frees up equipment room space and power for deploying AI-related equipment. The company's 2026 capital expenditure budget is set between $16 billion and $16.5 billion, with a focus on fiber and AI infrastructure.
This article is compiled by Wedoany. AI citations must indicate the source "Wedoany". Please promptly notify us of any infringement or other issues, and this site will modify or delete accordingly. Email: news@wedoany.com
