Verizon Business is now offering its enterprise-focused fixed-wireless access (FWA) service using 5G network slicing technology, which will allow for more consistent service performance and support service-level agreements (SLAs).

The new service taps network slicing technology to provide consistent throughput and latency, with noted speeds of at least 200 Mb/s on the downlink and 45 Mb/s for the uplink. These will be supported through SLAs and without data caps.

Scott Lawrence, chief product officer at Verizon Business, positioned the new offering as a way to better support uplink-heavy traffic like uploading content into a cloud environment or AI systems.

“As businesses take on AI-centric workloads (e.g. inferencing at the edge), they are now uploading more data than ever before,” Lawrence explained. “They’re capturing huge amounts of data from their operating environments (central or remote), uploading it into their systems, and transferring it into cloud instances and software platforms for AI-driven insights and generative actions.”

The service is currently available in “select markets nationwide, with availability expanding on a rolling basis.”

Slicing up services and growth

Network slicing is viewed as one of the key architectural features of a 5G standalone (SA) core deployment. It allows an operator to basically set up siloed virtual networks that act as independent, scalable networks and can support revenue-generating premium services. Analyst firms have been touting the financial benefits of commercial network-slicing capabilities, especially tied to penetrating different market verticals.

Verizon’s network slicing capabilities ride on the carrier’s 5G SA core that it has slowly been rolling out over the past few years.

The carrier touted early slicing efforts in mid-2023, which took advantage of the carrier’s virtualized, cloud-native, and containerized network systems to pass data over multiple network slices across its network to a commercially available 5G smartphone. More recently, Verizon rolled out network slicing capabilities in support of its public safety focused Frontline offering.

Former CEO Hans Vestberg earlier this year noted that the 5G SA core was supporting between 60 and 70 percent of the carrier’s 5G network, allowing it to support advanced network slicing technologies to power private 5G “way quicker [and] more efficient for our customers. It takes instead of weeks to set up, it will come down to days.”

The new enterprise focus also plays into Verizon’s more aggressive lean on its broadband infrastructure.

Recently installed CEO Dan Schulman pointed to that infrastructure as key to turning around the carrier’s operations, with plans to further invest in boosting capabilities. That includes Verizon’s pending $20 billion purchase of fiber broadband provider Frontier Communications and recently announced plans to acquire fixed-wireless broadband provider Starry in a move to expand the carrier’s multi dwelling unit (MDU) aspirations.

Those efforts continued to bear fruit for the carrier during the third quarter, with FWA posting a modest 261,000 net connection additions, while Verizon’s FiOS fiber service attracted 61,000 new connections, which was its highest growth quarter in two years.

Verizon CFO Tony Skiadas highlighted the importance of the carrier’s broadband focus, noting that 18 percent of its consumer postpaid phone base were also signed up for a converged offering at the end of the quarter, which is a 200-basis point improvement from the same quarter in 2024. More importantly, those customers are significantly less likely to churn.

“When you combine mobility with fiber, you see churn rates that are almost 40 percent less than what we see with our traditional mobility,” Schulman said of that impact. “Thinking innovatively about how we bundle together broadband writ large, and that includes fixed-wireless and fiber with our mobility to drive both incremental broadband revenues as well as incremental mobility revenues, will definitely be on the plate. So expect us to continue to invest in our broadband footprint, in our fiber footprint, as well as our fixed-wireless as well.”

Slicing competition

Verizon’s network slicing efforts come on the heels of similar moves by rival T-Mobile US and, to a lesser extent, AT&T.

T-Mobile US rolled out its 5G SA core in 2020, and followed a few years later by providing developers with early access to its network slicing capabilities. The carrier has since ramped those efforts to support streaming video services, enterprise security services, and more recently in support of its enterprise-focused SuperMobile offering.

AT&T also recently launched nationwide availability of its 5G SA core but has been muted on network slicing capabilities. The carrier earlier this year launched an enterprise-focused “Turbo” option that prioritized network traffic to support a “more consistent network experience and data connectivity,” but had previously noted that a consumer version of that service was not done via network slicing.