Verizon signs $1 billion dark-fiber deal for Google data centers: Reuters

CEO Dan Schulman said Friday that Verizon has struck a woody with Google worthy much than $1 cardinal to proviso dark-fiber links for the hunt motor giant's information centers.

Schulman disclosed the declaration during Verizon's post-earnings call, according to Reuters. The companies did not supply details astir the agreement's duration, geographic scope oregon deployment schedule.

Dark fibre is installed fiber-optic infrastructure that a lawsuit operates utilizing its ain networking equipment. Unlike a managed web service, it gives the lawsuit greater power implicit capableness and web design. For Google, the statement volition enactment connectivity betwixt its data-center facilities.

Google's AI walk

Alphabet reported antagonistic escaped currency travel of astir $5.9 cardinal successful the 2nd quarter, its archetypal antagonistic 4th since going nationalist successful 2004, arsenic spending connected AI infrastructure accelerated.

The Google genitor raised its 2026 capital-expenditure guidance to betwixt $195 cardinal and $205 billion, up from $180 cardinal to $190 billion, with astir of the spending directed toward servers, information centers and networking equipment. Alphabet besides plans to grow its usage of third-party compute capableness arsenic a impermanent span portion it builds further infrastructure internally.

Data Center maturation

Verizon expects to disclose further agreements earlier the extremity of 2026, though Schulman did not place the prospective customers oregon supply idiosyncratic declaration values.

"We person different deals that we expect to denote by twelvemonth extremity that taken unneurotic are expected to beryllium worthy aggregate billions of dollars successful gross implicit the adjacent respective years," Schulman said.

The expected agreements would make a multiyear gross accidental beyond Verizon's halfway user wireless and home-internet operations. The Google declaration concerns data-center connectivity and is abstracted from the companies' earlier enactment involving artificial intelligence, unreality services and 5G networks.

In 2021, Verizon and Google Cloud agreed to harvester Verizon's 5G web with Google's computing services for mill automation. Verizon aboriginal offered Google One AI Premium to eligible wireless and home-internet customers, portion Google's Gemini models person been integrated into Verizon's customer-service systems.

Verizon raises its 2026 outlook

Verizon disclosed the dark-fiber woody arsenic it reported second-quarter results and raised its full-year forecasts for adjusted net and escaped currency flow.

Verizon said it added 184,000 wireless subscribers who wage monthly bills during the quarter, topping the 103,900 additions expected by analysts surveyed by FactSet. The institution has rolled retired simplified unlimited plans and bundled wireless and broadband billing arsenic Schulman seeks to amended subscriber growth.