Verizon has expanded its partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS) after the US carrier signed an AI infrastructure deal worth more than $2 billion.

The telecoms company announced the partnership today, as it reported its third-quarter earnings.

It comes months after Verizon signed a $1bn fiber deal with tech giant Google, that will see the carrier provide the hyperscaler with its dark fiber to connect Google's data centers.

Verizon said its AWS deal "establishes a commercial framework to scale distributed compute and meet the real-time demands of agentic and generative AI workloads."

Dan Schulman noted that the carrier's fiber network is sought after to power the next generation of AI infrastructure.

"Customer demand across dark fiber, lit fiber, [and] our Edge compute locations is exceptionally strong," said Schulman during the company's earnings call. "I mean obviously it represents a significant growth opportunity for us and a large new and it’s a rapidly growing TAM for us, addressable market."

The earnings announcement today marked a year at the helm for Schulman, who outlined plans for an AI-led "full reboot" during Verizon's third-quarter earnings last year, shortly after joining the carrier.

With Google and now AWS on Verizon's books, Schulman suggested that the company is pushing to add more partners.

"We now have an active pipeline of additional hyperscalers, neocloud providers, and large enterprise clients who are in negotiations to have us supply them with either dark or lit fiber connectivity," he added.

"I am also pleased to report that we are seeing momentum with numerous partners to use our network hubs for AI inference Edge computing, and that momentum is already turning into signed deals."

Schulman said that the company's first long-term contracts are expected to generate hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue over their term, with the carrier having signed contracts for approximately $4bn.

"Based on the demand we are seeing, we expect both our fiber and Edge computing to add meaningfully to our future growth," said Schulman.

Schulman's stance on pushing to support hyperscalers follows on from former Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg, who previously remarked in 2024 that the carrier was best placed to maximize the potential of generative AI Edge computing.

Verizon's ability to support the hyperscalers will be supported by the carrier's multi-year supply agreement with fiber manufacturer Corning that will see the latter supply more than 80 million miles of high-density optical fiber for Verizon through 2032.

That deal supports Verizon's efforts to support the long-haul backbone that AI hyperscalers need, in addition to Verizon's own fiber broadband goals.

Verizon's Q3 2026 highlights

For the quarter, Verizon posted operating revenue of $34.3bn, up 1.5 percent year-on-year (YoY), with mobility and broadband service revenue growth of 2.9 percent, though this was offset by a nine percent YoY decline in equipment revenue.

Verizon said it added 406,000 postpaid phone net additions in Q3, which it notes was more than 820 percent increase YoY, marking the strongest third-quarter performance in five years for the carrier.

During the quarter, the carrier added 314,000 broadband net additions, including 159,000 fixed wireless access (FWA) and 155,000 fiber broadband net additions. In total, Verizon has 17.4 million total broadband connections.

Providing an update on its fiber buildout during the call, the company said it expects to hit 32 million locations by the year's end, as the carrier said it remains on track to hit its 40-50 million medium term target.

"Between fiber and FWA, we have the assets to deliver great value in broadband. It also demands a more sophisticated, segmented approach to FWA. Where we can't deliver the speed a particular segment of customers expects from Verizon, we won't sell it," said Schulman.

Following the results, Verizon confirmed it's increasing its full-year guidance for the third quarter in a row, as the carrier said it expects to add 1.1 million to 1.2 million, up from the upper half of 750,000 to 1 million for the full year, as the company also expects to increase its cash flow from operations and free cash flow.