Verizon CEO boasts $1B Google dark fiber deal is tip of the AI opportunity iceberg, quiet on latest job cuts

Verizon CEO Dan Schulman announced a deal worth "well in excess of $1 billion" to provide Google with dark fiber for connecting its data centers, calling it the first of multiple AI infrastructure deals expected by year end that could total "multiple billions of dollars" in revenue. Schulman remained silent on the carrier's latest job cuts.

Verizon CEO Dan Schulman touted a $1 billion-plus deal with Google to provide the carrier’s dark fiber for connecting the hyperscaler’s data centers claiming it was the first of others to come, but was notably silent on the carrier’s most recent round of job cuts. Schulman’s Google proclamation came during the carrier’s latest earnings call, where the executive noted the deal was “well in excess of $1 billion” to use “Verizon dark fiber to connect their data centers.” That deal marks the first major win for Verizon under Schulman who has extensively boasted https://www.sdxcentral.com/news/verizon-sees-fiber-expansion-limit-ai-revenue-opportunities/ about the carrier’s AI-related financial opportunities, which the executive quickly noted was one of many. “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,” Schulman said. “These are long duration, high quality, contracted revenue streams from some of the most demanding infrastructure customers in the world. We believe that this is just the beginning. The buildout of AI infrastructure across the United States is one of the largest capital cycles of our lifetime, and Verizon is uniquely positioned to participate in it.” This position is on top of Verizon’s already deployed long-haul and metro fiber footprints that “we have spent decades building” and that are designed to support of “carrier-grade, low-latency, highly resilient transport network that hyperscalers need to connect compute to compute, model to model, and region to region.” Schulman noted that some customers want dark fiber “so they can do the electronics around it,” while others want lit fiber “so we do all of the servicing around it. But whether it's dark or lit, our assets are suddenly in tremendous demand for that data center connectivity.” Schulman, a long-time industry executive, did note that “we built that infrastructure for a different era, but it has turned out to be exactly the right asset for this one.” The viability of those assets has also been helped by Verizon’s AI Connect initiative, which was initially focused on Verizon’s internal operations. This includes work on customer interactions, new pricing models, and aligning its internal “cost structure.” “But behind the scenes, it was clear that there was a kind of once-in-a-generation opportunity for Verizon to participate in the massive AI infrastructure buildout,” Schulman said, adding this participation is on the back of an initial push around compute resources. “As we talked to hyperscalers, alternative cloud providers, enterprises, there's a need for ever increasing compute power. … Everybody knows that. Everybody's hearing about it. And the way that that compute power has moved over the last year or so is, at first it was about optimizing racks, and then it was basically saying, ‘how do we combine racks within a data center to optimize compute power?’ And now it really is about how do you connect data center to data center to assure that you can optimize and maximize the ever-exploding need for compute.” Did someone say MEC? Verizon’s Google deal shows the carrier is aligned with that broad data center to data center need, but Schulman also explained that this demand requires a more dispersed asset base. Toward this, Schulman went further by touting an “equal amount of desire and demand to power inference models and applications that need ultra-low latency, like robotics or remote surgery, autonomous driving, and move that out into the edge as opposed to these big, massive data centers.” This aligns with Verizon’s long-simmering mobile edge compute MEC https://www.sdxcentral.com/news/verizons-5g-future-tied-to-spectrum-technology-advances/ thesis that hung over former Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg https://www.sdxcentral.com/news/verizon-appoints-dan-schulman-as-ceo-hans-vestberg-steps-down/ , but could finally come to fruition under Schulman’s tenure. Schulman initially touted Verizon’s work in “retrofitting many of our central offices into data centers for inference edge computing, with multiple conversations underway with partners who are eager to utilize these power-ready and permitted locations,” before adding more detail. “We have thousands of central offices, many of which we're taking copper out of, and we are retrofitting them to be remote data centers that are power ready, permitted, fully redundant infrastructure,” Schulman said of those facilities. “We did a small trial on that and sold out capability in 24 hours. So we're seeing large demand for that as well.” When and where’s the traffic? Despite that demand, Schulman did caution that the carrier will eventually have to worry about managing access, though Verizon is well positioned to deal with that management. “The demand for these fiber routes that we currently have and that we are building is ultimately limited, and that capacity and pricing is … we're going to have to think about how we handle the demand for that,” Schulman said. “We're clearly an attractive player with differentiated assets that are in high demand. We've been building carrier-grade fiber routes for decades. We know how to get it done. We understand permitting. We do our own construction, and we have a solid balance sheet, and a solid service reputation that the AI ecosystem needs and counts on.” Schulman’s AI-derived confidence echoed that of AT&T CEO John Stankey https://www.sdxcentral.com/news/att-ceo-john-stankey-exudes-quiet-network-confidence-to-serve-hyperscale-connectivity/ who told an investor conference earlier this year that the carrier’s network investments have been about building out “great strategic access.” This includes the carrier’s recent wireless spectrum purchases that are allowing AT&T “to get more symmetrical low-band spectrum that will allow us to engineer that in a way that we can have a higher performing network in the upstream than what historically wireless has delivered with our preferred low-band positioning.” This combination provides “the infrastructure that people want to use, whether it's a LLM large language model or somebody's cloud infrastructure,” Stankey said, adding this then plays into supporting hyperscale providers. “We've been actively in the data center market and actively working with hyperscalers to ensure that we're building shared infrastructure into their access points and have the right relationships through a combination of dark and lit fiber that ensures that our backbone and our aggregation networks can deliver those packets that we get off of our preferred access into their infrastructure, and I have visibility as I hand it into the infrastructure and receive it back and deliver it to the endpoints,” Stankey said. “That's the fundamental approach we're using in how we architect the network.” While those two carrier executives are bullish on this opportunity, T-Mobile US CTO John Saw said during that carrier’s earnings call last week that it has yet to see any AI-related impact on its network. Saw explained that current AI-derived traffic is focused on “model training, large-scale agentic automations, and heavy backend automations,” with most of those “confined to wireline transport networks and massive data centers.” “This type of compute we have not seen putting a material strain on mobile networks,” Saw said. “We have not seen any surge in mobile traffic due to AI.” Saw did add that “if AI traffic continues to grow, especially with the growth of physical AI, I think we are more than prepared and we have sufficient runway to continue to invest in our capacity.” That runway is paved with T-Mobile US’ deepening pool of spectrum resources https://www.sdxcentral.com/news/t-mobile-us-2g-network-shut-down-is-nigh-really/ , its installation of some of the more advanced 5G technologies https://www.sdxcentral.com/news/t-mobile-us-teases-bigger-fiber-appetite-flexes-5g-advanced-update/ , and the carrier’s expanding fiber footprint https://www.sdxcentral.com/news/t-mobile-us-projects-modest-fiber-growth/ . “Remember, we rolled out 5G-Advance recently and are the only operator to do that, and one of the reasons why we did that is that is we want to improve the uplink performance, especially with the potential surge in AI mobile traffic soon,” Saw explained. “With 5G-Advance we have been able to improve uplink performance with uplink carrier aggregation, uplink MIMO multiple-input, multiple-output , transmit switching, all that is actually in preparation for not just giving our customers with phones a better experience but also better uplink for future AI traffic that we expect to be seeing soon.” T-Mobile US CEO Srini Gopalan did quickly interject following Saw’s comments, noting that while the carrier has indeed not yet seen an AI-related surge, “we look forward to seeing it because our network's more prepared than anyone else.” Quiet on job cuts While Schulman was verbose in touting the fiber wins, the executive did not proffer and was not asked about the carrier’s most recent reported job cuts. Reuters https://www.reuters.com/business/world-at-work/verizon-shed-274-stores-lay-off-another-500-corporate-employees-2026-07-16/ earlier this month reported that Verizon was eliminating around 500 corporate jobs https://www.sdxcentral.com/news/verizon-to-slash-thousands-of-corporate-retail-jobs/ as part of a restructuring and that 274 corporate-owned stores are being sold, which in total will impact around 3,000 employees. The report indicated that the carrier informed employees in a note that it was working with retail franchise owners that currently operate 5,000 outlets "to elevate the experience in every one of their locations because we know how important they are to our overall customer experience." A Verizon spokesperson in an email confirmed the Reuters numbers, adding that the corporate-owned stores would be "transitioning" to "franchise locations," and "about 70% of those retail locations typically "accept positions at the new franchise locations." Those cuts were labeled as "part of our ongoing transformation" and the latest under Schulman who in just under a year has implemented significant cost-cutting programs https://www.sdxcentral.com/news/verizons-13000-plus-job-cuts-will-be-quick-and-cost-nearly-2b/ across the carrier. This includes an initial move to slash 13,000 jobs, which was completed at the end of Verizon’s fiscal first quarter of this year and came with a $2 billion price tag, and a more recent round of cuts https://www.sdxcentral.com/news/verizon-continues-mass-layoffs-with-hundreds-more-jobs-on-the-chopping-block/ .