Impact of Q4/2025 Earnings: T-Mobile, AT&T, and Verizon

Verizon, AT&T, and T‑Mobile each delivered strong subscriber growth in Q4/2025, and all three companies are reshaping their networks, cost structures, and customer strategies through AI, fiber convergence, and disciplined capital spending going into 2026. Verizon announced a large layoff, and continues to sharpen its efficiency under new leadership with continued investment in fiber noted by the closing of the Frontier transaction. AT&T continues to place investments in fiber noting the benefit of convergence, along with additional spectrum from EchoStar. T-Mobile continues to be strategic with its less capital intensive investments in fiber partnerships, leaning heavier into fixed wireless for broadband targets that were raised for 2030, and commencing integration of the inherited US cellular locations.

For property owners and tower developers, investment from Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile will drive additional tower builds and modifications of existing wireless infrastructure. However, the main customers will likely become even more tactical for additional investment and new tower / rooftop collocations as 2026 continues.

Verizon

• Workforce reduction – laid off 13,000 employees

• Frontier Acquisition Closed – adding over 30 million in fiber passings

• New MVNO agreement with Comcast and Charter

• Postpaid phone net adds: 616,000 in Q4, (includes 551,000 from Consumer – highest quarterly net adds in 5 years) (750k – 1M – 2026 forecast)

• +319,000 fixed wireless net customer additions in Q4

• +67,000 FIOS fiber customer additions in Q4

• $20.1B free cash flow in 2025 ($21.5B 2026 forecast (highest level since 2020))

• $17B CAPEX in 2025 ($16.0B – $16.5B 2026 forecast)

  Quotable: re: AI usage to redefine customer experience

  “We are reducing complexity, eliminating the things customers hate and removing pain points to make it easier to do business with us. To do this successfully and efficiently, we are determined to be an AI-first company, deploying AI at scale. We will use AI to optimize our operations and fundamentally reshape the customer experience. We are leveraging it to simplify offers, personalized interactions and reduce churn through smart, consistent marketing. By using predictive models, we can anticipate customer pain points before they happen, allowing us to solve problems proactively. We will use our data and AI capabilities to not just massively improve our efficiency and customer satisfaction, but to redefine our value propositions and deliver hyper-personalized experiences.”

   Dan Schulman | CEO, Verizon

  Quotable: re: Benefit of Convergence of Fiber and Mobility

  “Obviously, Frontier is a huge opportunity for us in net adds as well. We’re significantly underpenetrated in Frontier markets on wireless. And when we bundle together, we see a 40% reduction in churn versus stand-alone mobility. And so our goal over time is to win our share of new to market net adds, win responsibly in a manner that sustainably grows our top line and allows us to drive shareholder value. And so I think you’re going to see a combination of us spending a lot to improve our overall value proposition, leveraging convergence, seeing churn go down and then being appropriately aggressive where we need to in the market.”

   Dan Schulman | CEO, Verizon

  Quotable: re: Verizon 2026 CapEx Forecast

  “Honestly I don’t know if we need all $16 billion to $16.5 billion for our CapEx projects, but I think it’s a responsible number to have there. As Tony said, there are a lot of things that we spent pretty heavily on in the last couple of years. They’re predominantly complete. We’re almost done with all our nationwide 5G advanced stand-alone features as well. And so I feel really good about this CapEx envelope.”

  Dan Schulman | CEO, Verizon

AT&T

• Pending EchoStar (DISH) spectrum transaction completion

• Lumen transaction completed on 2/6/2026

• +1.5M postpaid phone net adds: for 2025  (did not provide forecast for 2026)

• +875,000 fixed wireless net customer additions in 2025

• +1M fiber customer additions in 2025

• $16.6B free cash flow in 2025 ($18.0B 2026 forecast)

• $20.8B CAPEX in 2025 (22.0B in Capital Investment) – ($23.0 – $24.0B 2026 Capital Investment Forecast)

• Quotable: re: AI and Cost Savings

  “Last year, we achieved over $1 billion of cost savings and we plan to accelerate efficiency gains across the company by leveraging AI, moving more customer transactions to digital, and achieving greater operating leverage, as we grow our customer base.”

   John Stankey | CEO, AT&T

  Quotable: re: Benefit of Convergence of Fiber and Mobility

  “We estimate that our share of postpaid phone subscribers is 10 percentage points higher in areas where we offer fiber, than in areas where we don’t. The power of our converged offers is evident across our business. In areas where we offer converged services, we rank number one in brand love, and number one in Net Promoter Score with consumers and small businesses and both wire wireless. And Internet connectivity. And we’re number one or number two with medium-sized businesses and enterprises. Scores for our converged offers are not simply better than our standalone services, they’re improving in most categories. So it’s no surprise that our converged customers remain our most valuable with lower churn, and a propensity to take higher internet speeds, attach more wireless lines, and stay with us longer.”

   John Stankey | CEO, AT&T

   

T-Mobile

• Workforce reduction – laid off an undetermined number of employees in the start of Q1/2026

• $10.0B CAPEX in 2025 ($10B – 2026 Forecast)

  Quotable: re: AI and site deployment strategy

  “We use AI and huge amounts of customer data to deploy capital in our network based on what’s right for customers rather than chasing a vanity stack like pops. I’ll give you an example of where this makes a real difference. Let’s take Sacramento. Now, the traditional way of thinking about improving the network and is densify the network, cover more box. The reality is to improve the customer experience, for the people in Sacramento, where you actually need to double down on coverage. It’s not just Sacramento itself, but Lake Tahoe. Given the amount of time they spend in Lake Tahoe. Right? And that understanding of where people work where they live, where they play, that combination of things is really what drives network experience. And using AI, using scale machine learning, all of our site deployment we deploy almost 4,000 greenfield sites a year now. All of our site deployment is surgically planned to improve our customer experience. That’s been the heart of what’s driven the best network. Great assets, a fabulous score, and the ability to use all of this to meaningfully change the game on customer experience. And what that’s resulted in is a true ultra capacity network. Now the proof of capacity, the best way to think about capacity, is speed.”

  Srini Gopalan | CEO, T-Mobile US

  Quotable: re: Fiber Deployment and resiliency in TMO’s growth

  “An interesting fact is in areas where our competitors have built fiber, we have gained share. Now I’m not suggesting that there’s any causality there. Right? But we have gained share even in areas where our competitors have built fiber because we continue to attract the network seeker population in those areas. And our historical under-indexation gives us share growth opportunities. This collection of opportunities across top 100 and when you look at our top 100, all of you are familiar. We split it into three kinds of markets. Markets where we’re number one, number two and number three, and we’re growing across all three. We’re continuing to win household share.”

  Srini Gopalan | CEO, T-Mobile US

  Quotable: re: Potential of add-on fiber acquisitions

  “So on fiber, our view on this has been clear. We see fiber as a real opportunity to create customer and equity value. We’re not targeting a number, certainly not targeting a number of homes passed. Right? So we’re not really keen on how much fiber runs outside multiple buildings. Right? We’re keen on building a business that creates equity value and creates value for customers. Today, everything you saw was based on the Lumos MetroNet expansion. So all the numbers we presented today are the assets we have currently. Are we open to looking at more assets? Yes, at the right price.”

  Srini Gopalan | CEO, T-Mobile US

In early 2026, the SpaceX $17B EchoStar spectrum deal has redefined the market by shifting the focus toward satellite-to-cell technology, making it vital to understand why are cell tower leases so long—often 25 to 50 years—as carriers lock in land for decades to amortize infrastructure costs while they navigate this transition. This long-term commitment creates significant risk if you don’t plan for what happens when a lease expires, as the 2026 landscape is seeing a surge in “decommissioning” where companies like Dish (under EchoStar) have invoked force majeure to stop rent payments, potentially leaving you with an obsolete tower and $50,000+ in removal liabilities. For many, these risks make a cell tower lease buyout an attractive strategic move, as it allows you to trade your future rental income for a large lump sum—typically at multiples of 18x to 25x annual rent—effectively shifting the risk of technological obsolescence or carrier default from your pocket to the investor’s.