Verizon Communications Inc at Barclays Communications and Content Symposium Summary

The following is excerpted from the question-and-answer section of the transcript.

Question: Kannan Venkateshwar - Barclays Bank - Analyst : <_ALACRA_META_ABSTRACT>Maybe we could start off with your network priorities for the year, what you're focused on right now. And there's a lot going on in the industry, of course. It would be great to get your perspective. Joseph Russo - Verizon Communications Inc - Executive Vice President and President - Global Networks and Technology Yeah. So as I suspect, I'll make some forward-looking statements which carry risk and uncertainty. I first would like to draw everyone's attention to our Safe Harbor statement which you can find on our investor website. And there it is, very good. So network priorities. And when you say this year, I would say it's a very common year after year priority. I've been at Verizon for 30 years and when I think about our strategy for the network, it's rooted in what we call our mission, which is to provide our customers the best, most reliable, highest performing, and secure networks so that they can do what they want to do where they live, work and play. And so this year, if I think about what are the key things we're doing to fulfill that mission, I'll start with our mobility network. Crown jewel, we love it. It's never been performing better. We just took several 5G awards in route metrics, which I'm very proud of. But we're continuing this year to build out our ultra-wideband network aggressively, and we've been on that journey for several years now. This year we'll once again put a ton of investment in C-Band and millimeterWave to get more and more customers access to that ultra-wideband experience. So that's one of the key factors for our network strategy on the mobility side. REFINITIV STREETEVENTS | www.refinitiv.com | Contact Us consent of Refinitiv. 'Refinitiv' and the Refinitiv logo are registered trademarks of Refinitiv and its affiliated companies. FEBRUARY 25, 2025 / 2:15PM, VZ.N - Verizon Communications Inc at Barclays Communications and Content Symposium The other thing we're doing in mobility this year, which is a little new, is starting to really ready the network for 5G advanced services. So we have our stand-alone core fully functional at this point, 100% virtualized, migrating customers to that aggressively. We have

Question: Kannan Venkateshwar - Barclays Bank - Analyst : Got it. Yeah. We'll touch on fixed wireless. Maybe one place to start off is fiber because, obviously, the focus there has changed a little bit over time. You guys were the pioneers in the industries with Fios. But then returns were not as you expected, and so you pulled back a little bit. And now, of course, you're going all in on fiber. So could you maybe talk a little bit about what's changed from a deployment perspective?

Question: Kannan Venkateshwar - Barclays Bank - Analyst : Got it. And so when you say cost and efficiency, you meant also when you look at cost per passing historically versus now, there is definitely some benefits for you that you're starting to realize?

Question: Kannan Venkateshwar - Barclays Bank - Analyst : Got it. Another big talking point, of course, is satellites.

Question: Kannan Venkateshwar - Barclays Bank - Analyst : I know. Yes. They had some interesting things to say, by the way, about MVNOs. But I mean, see, one of the things that obviously confuses folks a little bit is just there are two different models right now. One is the Apple model and then what you guys are doing and what T-Mobile is doing. So maybe it will be good to get some framework. How complementary is satellites to your terrestrial networks? And how is your approach different from others in the industry?

Question: Kannan Venkateshwar - Barclays Bank - Analyst : Got it. I guess one more headline this morning on satellites was SpaceX and what they're trying to do with the FAA. I know it's not a very big deal for you guys, but you do have this $2 billion deal with the FAA. So any early thoughts on that headline? --

Question: Kannan Venkateshwar - Barclays Bank - Analyst : Got it. Yeah. Right. You mentioned millimeter wave and the MDU solution. And obviously, you were early when you got into that market. You were part of the early deployment plans. So maybe you could talk about the newer approach and what the learnings were from the earlier deployment? And what does your road map look for?

Question: Kannan Venkateshwar - Barclays Bank - Analyst : In terms of the MDU deployment path, how far along is that --

Question: Kannan Venkateshwar - Barclays Bank - Analyst : Got it. Yeah. On the wireless side, AT&T seems to have taken this big step of moving its core to Microsoft. And your approach is slightly different. And you've built your own cloud.

Question: Kannan Venkateshwar - Barclays Bank - Analyst : Yeah. I agree. So could you maybe talk about these alternative paths to virtualizing your networks? And is there a CapEx-OpEx benefits? Is there an operating benefit that you realized from your approach?

Question: Kannan Venkateshwar - Barclays Bank - Analyst : Got it. Is that would also keep you away from maybe the O-RAN approach that AT&T has taken? Or is that something in your future road map?

Question: Kannan Venkateshwar - Barclays Bank - Analyst : Got it. In terms of capacity, it feels like we are in a period where there might be a lot of spectrum that comes up. I mean you, of course, have AWS-3, but then you also have talks of the [7] (added by company after the call) gigahertz, you have C-band potentially. Could you talk about your capacity needs, maybe both short term and long term that can be complemented by some of the other stuff coming into the market?

Question: Kannan Venkateshwar - Barclays Bank - Analyst : Got it. And you mentioned briefly some of these network capabilities that you're building. It enables new applications and so on to work on your network a little bit better. So maybe we could just expand on that topic because you've announced some API integration there. And that seemed like a pretty big shift in terms of industry dynamics because applications are now controlled, for the most part by the Apples of the world. But this might give you a way back in I guess, into some of these applications or integrated at least a bit more with your network.

Question: Kannan Venkateshwar - Barclays Bank - Analyst : Got it. And you mentioned standalone core earlier getting more ready in that road map. I guess you do need stand-alone core for some of the applications like edge compute for instance, or network I think maybe. Could you talk about maybe how these applications scale now that your network is closer to where you want it to be? When should we start seeing some of these newer opportunities starting to scale?

Question: Kannan Venkateshwar - Barclays Bank - Analyst : Got it. In the last minute that we have, maybe we can touch on AI a little bit more, which is -- there is some commoditized applications like data centers for instance, or maybe backhaul that look like they're low-hanging fruits and there could be an opportunity there. And I'm sure there's other stuff behind that. So could you just talk about where your focus is right now when it comes to AI?

Question: Kannan Venkateshwar - Barclays Bank - Analyst : We're out of time, Joe. Thank you so much for being here.

Question: Kannan Venkateshwar - Barclays Bank - Analyst : Thank you.