• Verizon's CEO says he assumes SpaceX will flawlessly execute its US ambitions — but he's not worried.
• In order for Starlink to compete, it will still need a lot of land-based infrastructure.
• That building could require SpaceX to spend a half trillion dollars over up to eight years, he said.

In business, as in war, the safest bet is often to avoid underestimating your competitors, even when the odds appear to be in your favor.

Verizon CEO Dan Schulman says he's a student of that philosophy when it comes to Elon Musk's ambitions to develop SpaceX's Starlink into a significant US network player.

"Clearly, the tech and the wireless landscape is rapidly evolving, and we need to rapidly evolve along with that," he said during the company's third-quarter earnings call Monday. "I also operate under the assumption that everything SpaceX says they will do, they will do, and that they will execute flawlessly."

Setting aside Musk's track record of delivering on his eyebrow-raising promises, Schulman said there are significant technical and financial hurdles that Starlink would have to clear to meaningfully compete with established networks like Verizon. But it is possible.

"If they build a terrestrial network, it will basically look and feel like every other network," he said. "I think we should take it quite seriously."

News earlier this month that Starlink had acquired a batch of mobile-friendly low-band spectrum sent the share prices of the major US mobile carriers falling by approximately 10%. Verizon is the only one of the three to partially recover from the drop.

"Their service just can't compete with a terrestrial network in suburban and urban areas, where like 98% of our revenues are," he said of the satellite-based system. "We're somewhere between 100 to 1000 times more efficient than they are."

Building a competitive US network, especially for mobile, would require building as many as 80,000 large cell towers on Earth linked with some combination of satellites and fiber optics, Schulman said.

Schulman estimates that project would cost up to a half trillion dollars over six to eight years, with a minimum of four to six years to actually build out the network.

"Then they need to build retail customer service, back office systems, et cetera., and all of that gets them basically the same network and same capabilities and same cost structure as what we have today," Schulman said.

After the call, Musk responded to the forecast with a post on X: "Will take 2 or 3 years."

The Verizon chief's remarks come less than a week after his AT&T counterpart, John Stankey, brushed off concerns that Starlink's mobile network could pose a threat to his business.

"I wouldn't over-rotate on what I would call one carrier of low band spectrum," he said.

Verizon CEO Dan Schulman (pictured) punched back on any concerns related to SpaceX’s proposed direct-to-device (D2D) mobile service during a Q3 earnings call, warning the satellite player faces years of construction and hundreds of billions of dollars in spending to build a rival terrestrial network.

“I’d just start off by saying my operating philosophy in general is to be very thoughtful, be analytic and to never take anything for granted,” he said when asked about the threat a SpaceX D2D service could pose to US operators and whether Verizon will ever consider an MVNO deal to give a satellite player access to its infrastructure.

“I always have my eyes wide open,” Schulman added. “Clearly, the tech industry and the wireless landscape is rapidly evolving, and we need to rapidly evolve along with that”.

The CEO also said he operates “under the assumption that everything SpaceX says they will do, they will do, and that they will execute flawlessly”.

His comments came in the wake of reports SpaceX is seeking access to at least 80,000 US cell sites for Starlink Mobile. Bloomberg named Crown Castle among the tower companies in discussions over potential leases.

Schulman argued offering a competitive service would require 65,000 to 80,000 macro sites, backhaul, RAN equipment and substantial power supplies, alongside retail, customer service and back-office operations.

He estimated a full network build would take at least four-to-six years, with spending of $300 billion to $500 billion over seven or eight years, which he argued could leave SpaceX with broadly the same capabilities and cost structure Verizon has today.

“I think that SpaceX realises this, and they’re exploring a potential path to creating a terrestrial network,” he explained. “There’s no magic wand, there’s no secret sauce, there’s no shortcut, there’s no radically lower structural cost advantage.”

In addition to tower leases, SpaceX plans to combine satellites with ground-based radios, supported by an agreement to acquire up to 14MHz of paired 800MHz spectrum from Grain Management for a D2D service expected to launch in early 2028.

Schulman maintained satellite broadband is best suited to remote areas and cannot match terrestrial networks in urban and suburban markets, which he said account for about 98 per cent of Verizon’s revenue.

He said Verizon will keep improving its network and cost structure while SpaceX builds, pointing to its mmWave spectrum, work on 6G applications and plans for AI-enabled services.

While leaving room to work with satellite providers on complementary coverage, Schulman rejected the prospects of an MVNO agreement and stated existing agreements do not offer back-door access.

Schulman said he saw no benefit whatsoever in extending an MVNO deal to a satellite provider.

“It’s very hard to throw a punch against something that doesn’t exist, but once they come into the market, we will be ferociously competitive.”

Last week AT&T CEO John Stankey outlined the advantages he sees over the potential threat of SpaceX’s D2D service during a Q3 earnings call.

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Verizon unveiled an agreement worth more than $2 billion with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to supply dark fibre infrastructure to meet AI workload demand, alongside Q3 figures showing a spike in post-paid customers.

The operator noted the AWS agreement “establishes a commercial framework to scale distributed compute and meet the real-time demands of agentic and generative AI workloads”.

It builds on an existing strategic partnership between the two and mirrors a dark fibre deal with Google announced earlier this year.

On the operator’s earnings call today (26 October), CEO Dan Schulman said “these two contracts are a clear signal that the largest builders of AI infrastructure in the world are choosing Verizon as a strategic connectivity partner”.

He added the company also has 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 fibre connectivity”.

Results
Verizon reported net additions of 406,000 post-paid phone customers, up 820% year-on-year, and 137,000 post-paid net account additions.

It noted the latter is its best performance for this metric in more than a decade.

Net income of $5.3 billion was up 5.2%, attributed to a “sharp focus” on operational efficiency. Total operating revenue was $34.3 billion, up 1.5%.

In its Mobility and Broadband segment, it noted service revenue growth of 2.9% was offset by a 9% drop in equipment sales, due primarily to “significantly lower upgrade volumes” as customers keep devices longer.

It also noted the impact of a “strategic decision to reduce spending on device subsidies”.

Schulman hailed the period overall as “another record-breaking quarter” adding “one year into our transformation, Verizon is fundamentally stronger, operationally, financially and competitively”.

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Verizon and Ericsson claimed the first pre-standard 6G field call in the 7GHz range, moving their testing from the laboratory to a commercial network site.

The call was conducted at a Verizon commercial site in Concord, California, using an Ericsson 6G proof-of-concept kit. The companies tested upper mid-band frequencies outdoors and measured how the signals penetrated a building.

The test used a base station installed on a site shelter and user equipment housed in a 12-by-8-foot mobile enclosure capable of supporting stationary outdoor and indoor radio configurations.

Positioned away from the site shelter housing the base station, the mobile test unit features custom power backups, varied glass and wall material configurations. The setup allows engineers to measure how a pre-standard 6G stack operating over a 400MHz carrier handles line-of-sight and non-line-of-sight paths, foliage, physical obstacles, and building entry loss.

The companies verified an outdoor call and are also testing how 6G signals travel from open-air environments into buildings. The work measures coverage, throughput, latency, stability and feature performance in real-world conditions.

Verizon CTO and SVP of technology development Yago Tenorio stated Ericsson plays a key role in the operator’s 6G Innovation Forum and its efforts to turn 6G research into practical deployments. He added the outdoor trial would provide technical insights to help shape global standards and guide the design and deployment of future networks.

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A survey by Verizon Frontline revealed daily AI usage by US public safety agencies nearly tripled over the past year while drone and robot deployments also saw an uptick.

The sixth annual Verizon Frontline Public Safety Communications Survey, conducted by Lexipol Media Group, highlighted daily use of AI reached nearly 32%, while 56% of public safety agency users anticipate daily AI reliance within three years, signalling it as a critical decision-support tool.

Additionally, the daily use of drones and robots increased from 15% to 26% as agencies more frequently use them to navigate hazardous environments to keep human emergency responders out of harm’s way while providing real-time situational awareness.

Network resilience remains a priority as agencies adopt these technologies, with more than 77% of the responders identifying it and reliability as their main operational requirements. Network performance also shapes personal device choices, with about 49% of respondents citing resilience and reliability as the biggest factor when selecting a device plan.

Kim Mirabella, VP of Verizon Public Sector and Verizon Frontline, stated the 2026 findings show technologies including AI and robotics, once considered futuristic, are already essential tools used by first responders every day.

Verizon stated 1,035 US public safety professionals took part in the survey

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MWL‘s Mike Robuck sits down with executives from Ericsson, AT&T, Verizon and the US Department of War (DoW) to discuss the progress Integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) has made this year and where it is headed next.

Ericsson Federal CEO Christopher Ling sees sensing as a potential killer app for 6G, arguing it could give the US military a reason to invest in commercial cellular infrastructure beyond connectivity.

Integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) turns communications networks into sensors by analysing radio signals reflected from objects. It can detect, track and identify objects in much the same way as radar.

Ericsson Federal Technologies Group is the vendor’s US unit focused on adapting its commercial network technology for federal government and national-security customers.

ISAC has moved beyond laboratory testing over the past year. It has been demonstrated at a stadium, included in a US Department of War (DoW) contract and proposed for a Los Angeles, California trial ahead of the 2028 Olympics.

Dr Tom Rondeau, principal director of the DoW’s FutureG programme, said denser 5G and 6G networks, edge-based AI compute and greater access to commercial spectrum are making network-based sensing viable.

“We have a network that covers 70% of the landmass of the United States and about 98% of the population,” he said. “That’s what we’re trying to use this for, to kick off the value proposition of ISAC.”

Rondeau highlighted drones, particularly swarms, as the immediate focus. The aim is to find, fix and track potentially thousands of devices, including in dense cities where traditional sensors struggle and radar cannot simply be pointed into open sky.

“It’s one thing to have a missile defence system or a drone defence system that gets to look up and out into open airspace,” he said, “but it’s another to track it in downtown New York [City] or downtown [Washington] DC.”

Network density could compensate for the limited sensing range of individual sites. At the power levels involved, a single base station might reach only a few kilometres, but sites spaced every half kilometre could extend coverage across much of the network.

Rondeau (pictured, left) pointed to Ukraine’s Operation Spiderweb, in which drones smuggled deep into Russian territory and controlled over Russia’s cellular network reportedly destroyed roughly a third of its strategic bomber fleet.

“That tells us that we can no longer think of border security as just looking out of our geographical borders,” he said. “We have to be able to look across our entire nation.”

Rondeau also sees civilian applications for ISAC. Drawing on his time at DARPA studying emergency planning, he cited Hurricane Katrina, when evacuation plans fell apart because people did not go where planners expected.

“It’s not like we’re going to redirect them to where we want to be,” he said, “so why don’t we redirect the resources to where they actually are.”

Trials
AT&T and Ericsson ran a drone-detection demonstration near AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, during the FIFA World Cup football tournament a few months ago.

In nearby Dallas, Verizon and Samsung tested a crowd-density heatmap at the World Cup FanFest area, designed to help fans find shorter queues and organisers manage foot traffic.

“That was a crowd sensing for the FanFest area, which is completely different to detecting drones,” said Verizon CTO Yago Tenorio. “It looks like a business-to-business opportunity that you can monetise.”

Tenorio explained ISAC presents fewer privacy concerns than cameras because it returns shape, movement and rough size rather than identity. It can distinguish “a pedestrian from a bicycle and a drone from a bird”, though not one person from another.

The DoW has also begun funding development. In July, Cohere Technologies won a $28 million contract from the FutureG Office to build a multi-waveform radio access network prototype which uses commercial cellular infrastructure to detect drones and other aerial threats.

Ericsson and Finnish state-owned ICT company Erillisverkot have also run live demonstrations in a Helsinki cargo harbour, using sensing data from several network points to detect small, low-altitude drones.

Verizon’s 6G forum
Verizon has made ISAC one of two anchor themes of its 6G Innovation Forum, which it expanded in September. The other theme is AI wearables. Tenorio stated the forum was created to “design 6G bottoms up”, starting with viable use cases and how they might be monetised.

At Qualcomm’s San Diego, California campus, Verizon tested 100MHz to 400MHz of millimetre-wave spectrum across four synchronised transmission and reception points. The system mapped the position and velocity of an airborne target and moving ground vehicles while keeping a phone user on the ground connected over standalone 5G. Verizon presented the trial as a test of drone and vehicle safety tracking.

Millimetre wave was the only spectrum which offered enough bandwidth, Tenorio said, and bandwidth, more than frequency, determines sensing accuracy.

“The precision of the positioning and the radar image… is proportional to the bandwidth of the signal,” he stated. “Not so much the frequency, but the bandwidth.”

Technology divide
Huawei appears to have an early lead in ISAC deployments. Ling said Ericsson had been told the Chinese vendor has more than 300 ISAC-capable systems operating, although he cautioned the figure might not be exact. He linked the reported lead to China’s early nationwide shift to standalone 5G.

Ling (pictured, left) explained there’s a difference in terms of network architecture. In a monostatic configuration, one tower transmits a signal and receives its reflection, indicating an object’s presence and general direction. Huawei developed a monostatic system and, in Ling’s view, may now be reconsidering that approach. As far as he knows, Ericsson is the only company using a multistatic configuration, in which one site transmits and other sites receive the reflected signal, enabling more precise location and tracking.

A monostatic system might show an object is off to the left, he said. A multistatic system could place it 1,500 metres away, measure its speed and track it to within eight to 10 metres, the resolution he said the Arlington demonstration achieved.

Ling stressed that Ericsson is focused on 5G sensing rather than a fully integrated sensing and communication system. Turning a 5G network into a radar remains a significant technical challenge, he noted, and the company wants to establish the capability before moving further.

It has committed $100 million to ISAC and expects a commercial product within two years, ahead of the standards debate expected at the 2027 World Radiocommunication Conference.

Ling said micro-Doppler signatures from spinning propellers could allow the system to identify a drone type as well as locate it. “It’s not only detecting, tracking, you can get identification from it as well,” he said.

The resolution may eventually be good enough to support targeting without the more expensive radar systems the military uses today.

“You’ve got a drone that costs $30,000 and we’re shooting it down with a million-dollar missile,” he said. “This starts to bend the cost curve.”

Ericsson has held discussions with European countries bordering Russia, Ling added, and sees growing interest in the Middle East, where governments are concerned about protecting infrastructure.

From 5G to 6G
Tenorio described current ISAC work as a step towards 6G. Vendors are fitting sensing into 5G and 5G-Advanced systems while preserving as much connectivity capacity as possible; 6G would allow them to design the capability into the network from the outset.

“On 5G, you’re just squeezing it in as best as you possibly can,” he said. “But if you understand how it works, you have the opportunity to design it natively in 6G in a way that comes with no compromise.”

Verizon plans to extend its ISAC work to Los Angeles. The carrier has applied to the Federal Communications Commission for a one-year experimental licence to use 4.8GHz to 4.9GHz spectrum, part of the 4.4GHz band the NTIA is studying for 5G and 6G. It plans to test Ericsson hardware and software in and around its LA lab. The filing describes an outdoor private network within a five-kilometre radius, separate from commercial networks. The application is pending.

Tenorio called the band “a good compromise” between available bandwidth and a frequency low enough to propagate farther. Verizon has also applied to take part in the NTIA’s Mission 6G 28 programme, which will showcase 6G technology around the 2028 Olympics.

“LA will be an important opportunity for us to display not only what 6G is about… but where we are in terms of advancing the technology,” he said.

Beyond drones and crowds, Tenorio sees enterprise uses such as digital twins of factories and campuses. At shorter ranges, he said, ISAC could support vital-sign monitoring and fall detection in elderly care.

Shawn Hakl, SVP and head of product at AT&T Business, sees the value in places where cameras and sensors are impractical, or the assets belong to someone else. He cited public safety, analytics and flow control, and spotting changes such as an unplanned obstruction on a city street.

“ISAC gives us a way to get sort of topology information, environment information without having physically deployed stuff and basically getting signal data back,” he said.

Ling stated the military case may ultimately depend on sensing rather than connectivity: a customer which would not buy a 5G network solely for communications could still need the infrastructure to obtain 5G sensing.

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