Verizon’s CEO says convergence is our most significant near-term growth opportunity
Key Highlights
- Verizon plans to acquire Frontier in early 2026, adding approximately 29 million fiber passings and expanding its rural market presence.
- The company sees convergence as a key growth driver, with over 18% of its postpaid customers now opting for bundled services, reducing churn and increasing revenue.
- Verizon is targeting up to 650,000 Fios passings annually by 2025, with a goal to surpass 35 million fiber passings by 2028 after the Frontier acquisition.
- Strategic partnerships, such as with Eaton Fiber, enable Verizon to extend Fios services outside its traditional footprint in a capital-light manner.
- The company is optimistic about FWA's long-term potential, with over 5.4 million subscribers and recent acquisitions like Starry to enhance MDU capabilities.
Verizon is keen to get a bigger piece of the wireline/wireline convergence pie, and it remains confident that it can further that goal once it completes its acquisition of Frontier next year.
Speaking to investors during its third-quarter earnings call, Dan Schulman, who recently took the helm as Verizon’s new CEO, said that Frontier’s fiber base is a platform where it can ramp its wireless service presence.
“Convergence is one of our most significant near-term growth opportunities,” he said. “The pending acquisition of Frontier will enable us to serve approximately 29 million fiber passings, creating a massive cross-sell opportunity.”
Within the Frontier territory, which in many areas is rural, the service provider’s market share is lower than its traditional market. Schulman said it will address the opportunity to grow wireless share in the Frontier territories “on day one.”
“This will create a significant runway to capture mobility volume from our broadband customers and cross-sell broadband to our existing mobility base, driving meaningful revenue synergies,” he said. “I recently met with the Frontier senior leadership team. Their focus and performance are impressive. The results are trending above the expectations when we signed the deal, and I am looking forward to having them join the Verizon team.”
Advancing the converged vision
Verizon’s thesis about converged service offerings certainly was proven during the third quarter.
Anthony Skiadas, CFO of Verizon, said it “continues to see healthy retention benefits from our converged customers.”
“At the end of the quarter, more than 18% of our consumer postpaid phone base took a converged offering more than 200 basis points above last year,” he said. “We see significant opportunities to increase convergence in the Frontier footprint after we close the transaction.”
Like its fellow ILEC brother AT&T, Verizon is also narrowing churn in markets where it offers fiber-based broadband services. “Converged customers on fiber have a mobility churn rate that's nearly 40% lower than our overall mobility base,” Skiadis said.
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Verizon’s CFO says Frontier’s assets are a catalyst for fiber expansion and broadband growth
Verizon’s CEO says it's on track to reach 650K new Fios subscribers in 2025
Banking on broadband
Broadband overall continued to be a big factor in Verizon’s third-quarter results, adding a total of 306,000 net subscribers to its Fios and Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) customer bases.
Verizon’s broadband base rose by 1.3 million subscribers from a year ago and is now over 13.2 million subscribers.
Fios Internet delivered 61,000 net adds, which was the telco’s best quarterly result in two years.
A key focus for Verizon’s Fios plans is to expand the service to more addresses. In 2025, Verizon is targeting an expansion of Fios builds to up to 650,000 passings annually. Following the closing of the Frontier acquisition, Verizon expects the combined build to be up to 1 million or more passings annually.
By purchasing Frontier, which it expects to close in the first quarter of 2026, Verizon is inheriting a company that has also been finding success with fiber-based broadband. During the third quarter, Frontier saw gains in its fiber passings and broadband customer base. Frontier added 326,000 fiber passings in Q3 2025, reaching 8.8 million locations passed with fiber. It also grew its broadband customer base grew by 133,000, with a 20.2% increase year-over-year.
Looking forward, Verizon is expecting more than 30 million fiber passings in the combined Verizon/Frontier footprint by 2028. Over time, Verizon expects 35-40 million fiber passings.
“Given the demand for Fios, we're working to bring it to more and more premises within our footprint,” Skiadis said.
But now Verizon has hatched a plan to extend Fios out of its traditional wireline territory. The service provider recently announced a commercial fiber agreement with Eaton Fiber, an affiliate of Tillman, enabling it to offer Fios broadband to a broader base of households and businesses. The agreement combines Tillman's network design, build, and operations capabilities with Verizon's scale, distribution strength, and brand power in markets outside of the Verizon and Frontier footprint.
“It's a capital-light partnership,” Skiadis said. “It allows us to go outside of the pro forma footprint that we have, and Frontier has, and to increase the convergence opportunity.”
Likewise, Verizon is no less bullish on its FWA prospects. During the third quarter, Verizon saw strong gains in its FWA segment, adding 261,000 customers during the quarter. With approximately 5.4 million FWA subscribers, our annualized revenue has surpassed $3 billion and continues to grow.
“We believe FWA can be a long-term, sustainable business,” Skiadis said, adding that it recently announced, “an agreement to acquire Starry, which will enhance our MDU capabilities, combining our scale and resources with Starry's technical and go-to-market expertise.”
From an overall financial perspective, third quarter consolidated revenue was $33.8 billion, up 1.5% from the prior year period. “Our third quarter performance keeps us on track to deliver on our financial guidance for the year,” Skiadis said.
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Sean Buckley
Sean is responsible for establishing and executing the editorial strategy of Lightwave across its website, email newsletters, events, and other information products.
