- During a J.P. Morgan event, Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg said demand for private 5G networks is on the rise
- Verizon is seeing interest from a number of industries, including retail and manufacturing
- With 5G SA, private 5G network slices are served in a matter of days, not weeks
Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg is finally seeing the benefits of being too early to the mobile edge compute (MEC) game.
Vestberg was singing the praises of MEC several years ago, including on the stage of the CES show in 2021, but it didn’t take off as anticipated. MEC, or 5G Edge, is basically Verizon’s moniker for bringing computing capabilities closer to end-users by integrating compute and storage services at the edge of the network.
Since those early days, Vestberg’s owned up to being overly ambitious on the timeline. He did so again during an appearance at the J.P. Morgan Global Technology, Media and Communications conference on Wednesday.
“Some of you know that we were very early on mobile edge compute, maybe too early, and I take that responsibility. But I'd rather be too early on something than being too late. Now we're sitting in a really good position on monetizing that investment and our assets we have there,” he said.
Key to Verizon's MEC strategy has been its private 5G play, which in turn has enabled it to offer products like Private MEC to enterprises. Asked by J.P. Morgan’s Sebastiano Petti about the demand for private networks today versus a year ago, Vestberg replied that it’s “way better,” noting they’ve been working on increasing the funnel for two or three years. Now, more industries are signing up for private 5G networks – ranging from retail to financial services and manufacturing.
But it's not entirely clear if or when its private 5G growth will translate into MEC revenue.
Scaling up
According to Vestberg, now that Verizon has its private 5G hooks in enterprises, it's working to scale up deployments with customers.
Oftentimes, private network deployments start off fairly small, but as the CIO or head of the IT department starts seeing more opportunities to use it, it expands across the enterprise, he explained. It might start with one warehouse, and “if it works there, they take it to all warehouses. And we are in that scaling right now,” Vestberg said.
During Verizon’s earnings call last month, Vestberg said the Business Group at Verizon closed more than a dozen deals in the first quarter of 2025, including private networks for AdventHealth and Nucor.
The next advancement in private networking involves network slices, which rely on a 5G standalone (SA) core. Vestberg said Verizon has 5G SA in about 60% to 70% of its network today.
A network slice is “way quicker, more efficient for our customers.” Instead of taking weeks to set it up, “it will come down to days,” he said.
C-band update
Verizon started its 5G C-band deployment in Tier 1 cities; now it’s in Tier 2 and moving to Tier 3 markets, aiming for 80% to 90% C-band coverage by the end of this year. That means that sometime in 2026, it will be at 100% C-band coverage.
Vestberg reiterated Verizon’s goal to serve 8 million to 9 million fixed wireless broadband customers in 2028. But he said capital allocation and network deployment activities are focused on mobility first.
“We are not, at this moment, doing certain radio capabilities only for fixed wireless access. That is a secondary priority for us. I always get the question: When can it be a first priority? Yes, it can be, but not before we have concluded the C-band mobility deployment,” he concluded.