Dan Schulman
New Direction of Verizon in an Age of Digital Reinvention
By Jane Stevens
A new chapter is unfolding at Verizon Communications as Dan Schulman brings a different kind of leadership experience to one of America’s most important telecommunications companies. Named Chief Executive Officer in October 2025 after serving on Verizon’s Board of Directors since 2018, Schulman arrived with a career spanning telecommunications, technology, payments and financial services. His appointment marked a significant change in direction for Verizon, particularly because his previous experience includes leading PayPal through a major transformation into a global payments platform.
Schulman’s career has been built around businesses undergoing substantial change. Before joining Verizon’s executive leadership, he spent nine years as President and CEO of PayPal, where he helped transform the company into a global payments platform. During his tenure, PayPal’s revenue grew from 8 billion dollars to 30 billion dollars, earnings per share increased fivefold and hundreds of millions of customers were added to its platform. That experience is particularly relevant to Verizon because the telecommunications industry is also facing a period in which traditional services must be reshaped around changing customer expectations and new technologies.
His earlier career provides another layer to his leadership profile. Schulman held senior positions at AT&T, Priceline, Virgin Mobile USA and American Express. At AT&T, he became the youngest member of the company’s senior executive team, while at Priceline he helped grow annual revenue from 20 million dollars to nearly 1 billion dollars over two years. At Virgin Mobile USA, he was involved in building a prepaid cellphone business, giving him direct experience with the mobile communications industry long before his appointment as Verizon CEO.
That history helps explain why Schulman has approached Verizon with a strong emphasis on simplicity, customer value and operational discipline. Verizon is an enormous business, generating 138.2 billion dollars in revenue during 2025 and serving millions of customers across its wireless, broadband and connectivity operations. As of March 2026, the company reported 146.8 million wireless retail connections and 16.8 million fixed wireless access and fiber broadband connections.
Yet size alone does not guarantee growth. Verizon entered Schulman’s tenure facing intense competition in the American wireless market, where customers can easily compare prices, devices, network quality and bundled services. The new CEO has therefore sought to make the customer proposition easier to understand while improving the economics of acquiring and retaining subscribers. The company introduced its Simplicity wireless offering in 2026, replacing a more complicated lineup with a clearer approach to pricing and services.
The early results suggest that this strategy is beginning to gain traction. In the second quarter of 2026, Verizon added 184,000 postpaid wireless customers, a considerable improvement from the loss recorded in the comparable period a year earlier. The company also added 348,000 broadband connections across its fiber and 5G wireless broadband businesses. Verizon raised its full year adjusted earnings forecast and increased its expectation for free cash flow growth, providing evidence that Schulman’s emphasis on improving customer economics is being accompanied by financial discipline.
Cost management has been another central feature of the transformation. Verizon has been working to reduce operating expenses while examining how its retail and organisational structure can become more efficient. The objective is not simply to make the company smaller, but to create more room for investment in areas capable of producing future growth. For a telecommunications company operating extensive physical infrastructure, that balance is essential because networks require continuous investment even when consumer demand is changing.
Schulman’s background in technology and financial services also gives him an interesting perspective on the growing relationship between telecommunications and artificial intelligence. Verizon possesses an extensive fiber network that can become increasingly valuable as artificial intelligence companies and data center operators require enormous quantities of high capacity connectivity. In July 2026, Verizon announced a deal worth more than 1 billion dollars with Google to provide dark fiber connectivity for its data centers. Schulman also indicated that additional agreements could generate billions of dollars in revenue over the coming years.
This development represents a potentially important shift in the way Verizon can think about its infrastructure. For decades, telecommunications companies have primarily monetised networks by connecting consumers and businesses. The rapid expansion of artificial intelligence creates another opportunity. Data centers require reliable, high capacity connections between facilities, and Verizon’s fiber assets can become part of that emerging digital infrastructure. Schulman has recognised that the company’s existing network can serve as a foundation for new sources of growth rather than simply being viewed as a traditional telecommunications asset.
The strategy also reflects a broader change in the technology industry. Artificial intelligence is increasing demand for computing power, data centers and high speed connections. As these facilities expand, the value of the infrastructure connecting them becomes increasingly significant. Verizon has begun exploring the conversion of some facilities that currently house network equipment into data centers, with the company expecting new revenue from artificial intelligence infrastructure to begin appearing in its results in the future.
Schulman’s experience with cybersecurity adds another dimension to his suitability for the role. He spent nearly two decades as a director of NortonLifeLock, formerly Symantec, including six years as independent chairman. He has also served on the boards of Cisco and Flex. These experiences have exposed him to questions involving cybersecurity, technology risk and large scale corporate governance, all of which are increasingly important to a telecommunications company whose networks support businesses, government organisations and consumers.
His approach to leadership is therefore rooted in more than telecommunications expertise. Schulman has repeatedly moved between industries where technology changes customer behaviour and forces established companies to reconsider their business models. Payments, mobile communications, travel services and financial technology have all experienced this kind of disruption. At Verizon, he now faces perhaps one of the most complicated versions of the challenge because the company must simultaneously improve its consumer business, expand broadband, control costs and find new opportunities in emerging technologies.
The importance of execution will be particularly high during this period. Verizon has historically been recognised for the strength and reliability of its network, but modern customers increasingly judge telecommunications companies by the entire experience surrounding that network. Pricing clarity, service flexibility, digital support, loyalty programmes and bundled products can influence customer decisions just as much as coverage. Schulman’s emphasis on simplifying the customer proposition is consequently an attempt to make Verizon more competitive in a market where consumers have become increasingly demanding.
His first year as CEO has already produced signs of a broader transformation. The company has been attempting to improve subscriber growth while lowering customer acquisition and retention costs, and Schulman has described the business as reaching an important turning point. Verizon’s second quarter performance, including stronger subscriber additions and improved financial guidance, has provided some early support for that view.
The road ahead, however, remains demanding. Verizon must continue investing in its network while competing against powerful rivals and managing a mature wireless market. Consumers are also keeping their smartphones for longer, reducing equipment upgrade activity and putting pressure on one traditional source of industry revenue. At the same time, the company must determine how quickly artificial intelligence infrastructure can become a meaningful business without distracting from its core operations.
Schulman’s contract was extended through the end of 2028, giving him additional time to pursue the transformation. That continuity matters because changing a company of Verizon’s scale cannot be accomplished through a single product launch or one quarter of improved results. It requires sustained attention to customers, costs, technology, network investment and new sources of revenue.
Dan Schulman’s arrival at Verizon therefore represents more than a change of chief executive. It brings to the company a leader whose career has repeatedly centred on transformation. His experience at PayPal demonstrated his ability to reshape a major technology business, while his earlier telecommunications experience gives him an understanding of the industry’s competitive realities. At Verizon, those experiences are now being combined in a strategy built around simpler customer offerings, stronger operating performance and new opportunities created by artificial intelligence.
The significance of his leadership may ultimately be measured by whether Verizon can become more than a traditional wireless carrier. Its network, fiber assets, broadband capabilities and customer relationships provide the foundation for a much broader digital infrastructure business. If Schulman can successfully combine those assets with sharper customer propositions and disciplined execution, Verizon could emerge from this period with a stronger and more diversified position in the technology economy. His challenge is considerable, but so is the opportunity. The next several years will determine whether his vision can turn one of America’s largest telecommunications companies into a more agile, customer focused and technologically ambitious enterprise.
