Verizon CEO Dan Schulman once again outlined his desire for the carrier to leverage AI as part of its strategy.

Schulman, who took over as CEO in October, said the carrier's turnaround is gathering momentum as the telco outlined its first-quarter earnings today (April 27).

Verizon reported total operating revenue of $34.4 billion in Q1, up 2.9 percent Year-on-Year (YoY).

“Our first-quarter 2026 results show that our turnaround is not only progressing, it is gaining momentum," said Schulman. "We are beginning to reclaim our market leadership by putting the customer at the center of everything we do, reducing friction to increase loyalty and create genuine value."

AI-ok for Verizon

While Schulman has only been at the helm for six months, he's been vocal in talking about how Verizon will utilize AI within its operations.

He has previously hinted at an AI-led revolution at the carrier, shortly before Verizon confirmed it would reduce its workforce by 13,000 in November.

On the company's earnings call, he was again asked about Verizon's AI plans, and once again doubled down on his views that AI will play an integral role for the carrier.

"I feel it is absolutely essential that Verizon uses the tools of this era to compete. I want us to be not an AI-first company. I want us to be an AI native company," he said.

"And I think there are three areas where you’re going to see us utilize AI to its fullest. You know, one is around operational efficiency, you know, taking out costs, improving productivity, delivering more value to customers."

He added that the second focus around AI is about delivering improved customer satisfaction, explaining that Verizon's AI tech stack has four different layers: A data and intelligence layer, a development factory layer where Verizon has its "agent building capabilities," a layer used to deploy agents, and finally the control plane, which looks at security, identity, guardrails, safety, observability, and traceability.

"We are going to be substantially complete with that entire AI tech stack by July, and we hope to be fully done by November," said Schulman, who noted that Verizon has "recruited quite a number of AI-savvy individuals into the company over the last seven months or so."

He added: "We’ve done more in the last three months than we’ve done in the last three to four years around this. We had a previous project on this that had a four-year completion date. We again will be substantially complete on all of this by July. We are working very closely with Google and Anthropic, and other best-of-breed AI players to bring this to life."

According to Schulman, since deploying AI extensively into its network, 85 percent of all issues Verizon faces right now are autonomously resolved.

"That means we are resolving issues before our customers even see them," he said.

Through the use of AI, Schulman said that Verizon has achieved energy savings of more than $200 million.

Aggressive on fiber

During the quarter, Verizon reported total core prepaid net additions of 115,000, representing seven consecutive quarters of growth. Wireless equipment revenue was $5.7 bn during Q1, an increase of 5.2 percent YoY.

Verizon delivered 341,000 broadband net additions in Q1. This includes total fixed wireless access net additions of 214,000 and 127,000 fiber broadband net additions.

At the start of the year, the telco also completed its $20bn acquisition of Frontier Communications.

The carrier's focus on pushing fiber and Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) has formed a key part of its strategy in recent years. Combined, Verizon now has 16.8 million fixed wireless access and fiber broadband connections.

Verizon has plans to expand its fiber passings to 40 to 50 million premises over the medium term, as the company looks to compete with AT&T, which aims to deploy fiber to 60 million premises by the end of the decade.

"We are solidly on track to have more than 32 million fiber passings by the end of this year. We are early in the journey of fully monetizing the combination of best-in-class mobility and a growing fiber and fixed wireless access footprint," said Schulman on the earnings call.

He adds that the Frontier integration is on track, while Verizon confirmed that it has paid down half of the Frontier debt since the acquisition closed, and expects to repay substantially all of Frontier’s debt by the end of the year.

The opportunity to deliver more growth for its broadband base could lie within Verizon's existing mobile customer base, suggests Schulman.

"We have a huge cross-sell opportunity. Only 20 percent of our base has broadband, and so we see large go-to-market opportunities for us there. Look, fiber has inherent advantages over FWA, and we’re going to prioritize it where we have coverage, and therefore, you should expect a mix shift, you know, from where we’ve previously been."