Verizon Claims mmWave 'Breakthrough' as FWA Net Adds Hit Record Low

Verizon added just 159,000 fixed wireless access subscribers in Q3, down 39.1% from 261,000 a year earlier, and CEO Dan Schulman used Monday's earnings call to answer the slowdown with a claim of a millimeter wave "breakthrough" targeting 10 million to 15 million additional US metro locations.

Schulman said the new capability will deliver 1-Gig speeds over FWA using Verizon's millimeter wave holdings. "Our 1,700MHz of millimeter wave spectrum has suddenly become a differentiated and competitive advantage," Schulman said, positioning it as a complement to the operator's C-band estate. "This is a technological breakthrough for us with significant positive implications."

He was short on specifics and on timing. Initial rollouts begin in Q4 2026 and run into 2027, which Schulman described as the "medium term." He said trials have already produced some "operational success." That is roughly a year away, a horizon practitioners should note before treating this as a near-term capacity fix.

What is actually behind the 'breakthrough'?

Verizon did not name the technology. EVP and CFO Anthony Skiadas pointed to the multiple-dwelling unit market as the center of gravity. "We are scaling our MDU program, which will enable us to deliver fiber-like speeds over an FWA connection," Skiadas said.

The evidence points to Starry, the startup Verizon acquired months after launching an MDU-tailored FWA product in January 2025. Starry built a 1-Gig-capable mmWave FWA platform for apartment buildings, with coverage in parts of five markets and an existing customer base.

LightShed Partners analysts Walter Piecyk and Joe Galle said the advance likely comes from a "new vendor that can consistently deliver a gigabit to every unit in a building. The prior one could not." New Street Research analyst David Barden went further. "Starry's point-to-multipoint architecture offers better propagation than a traditional wireless network," he wrote, adding that "most of what Dan spoke about today leverages Starry's technology developments." Barden also flagged possible antenna advances in customer premises equipment, and noted Verizon "found it tough to replicate Starry's model without access to in-building wiring."

How bad was the Q3 FWA result?

The numbers frame the urgency:

• 159,000 FWA net adds in Q3, versus 261,000 in the year-ago quarter
• Analysts had expected 194,000, so Verizon missed by about 35,000
• The base ended the quarter at 6.36 million FWA subscribers
• MoffettNathanson's Craig Moffett and Julie Zhu called it "the largest decline on record" in net adds and "the twelfth straight quarter of lower net additions"

Part of the slowdown is deliberate. Schulman said Verizon now refuses to sell service it cannot deliver at speed. "If a customer needs a gig of speed and we can only offer them 300-Meg, we shouldn't sell the service. It's just going to be something that disappoints a customer," he said. LightShed's analysts offered a harsher read, arguing the network is "straining from the home broadband customers sharing capacity with mobile users."

Is mmWave deployment actually accelerating?

Ookla data suggests Verizon's mmWave footprint is already expanding. RootMetrics testing in the second half of 2025 found mmWave in 2.2% of Verizon's urban and metro samples, against 0.2% for AT&T and "almost 0%" for T-Mobile. mmWave appeared in 75 Verizon markets in the first half of 2024; that rose to 91 of 125 markets by the second half of 2025. Download speeds exceeded 1 Gbit/s in several markets, with Denver, Atlanta, Philadelphia and Boston named as Verizon's top mmWave cities. Boston and Denver are former Starry markets, a possible early sign of acquisition payoff.

What could slow it down?

MDU deployment is slower than household FWA. It requires landlord approvals and detailed in-building installation. "With its 10-15 million targeted locations predominantly in apartment buildings, securing access will be a key constraint on how quickly availability becomes revenue," the LightShed analysts wrote. In practice, a program of that size, at typical MDU sign-up rates, is a multi-year revenue build rather than a subscriber surge.

Whether the breakthrough is mostly Starry's point-to-multipoint architecture, new CPE antennas or a new vendor, Verizon has set its own test: converting underused mmWave spectrum into fiber-competitive MDU revenue starting in Q4 2026.