I got my first home phone from Bell Atlantic 29 years ago, in 1997. When the line went dead, I called. A person picked up. A truck showed up.

In 2000 Bell Atlantic bought GTE and took the Verizon name. I kept the landline. Service was good.

On August 24, Google Cloud said Gemini now answers most of Verizon's incoming consumer calls and chats each month (Google Cloud, 2026).

That is a different company than the one that sent the truck.

I Already Wrote the Network Half in July

On July 6 I wrote that Verizon wants to fix coverage before you notice it broke. Yago Tenorio's team uses software to spot radio problems. They put Claude Code on 33,000 technology jobs.

This post is the call-center half. If you still dial, Google Cloud says Gemini picks up most of those consumer calls.

Schulman Has Been CEO for Ten Months

Dan Schulman became CEO on October 6, 2025. He replaced Hans Vestberg. Schulman had been on the Verizon board since 2018. He ran PayPal before that. He also worked at AT&T, Sprint, and Virgin Mobile.

On the July 24 earnings call he listed the first-year jobs in order. Fix wireless and home internet. Launch a simpler consumer plan. Run ten internal projects. Spend at least $9 billion less on running the company and buying gear. Rent leftover fiber and empty telephone buildings to companies that need them for AI (Verizon, 2026).

In mid-June Verizon launched a consumer plan called Simplicity.

In June Schulman told a Bloomberg Tech audience that software would handle a large share of customer service. A three-month trial, he said, raised customer satisfaction 12.8 points (CX Dive, 2026).

On August 24 Google Cloud said Gemini now answers most incoming consumer calls. In July Verizon said Google is renting more than $1 billion of Verizon fiber. Schulman said more of those rentals should be signed this year, with the revenue showing up in 2027 (Ars Technica, 2026).

The board extended his contract through December 31, 2028 (Dow Jones, 2026).

We are rapidly becoming an AI-centric company in how we operate.
Dan Schulman, July 24 earnings call (Verizon, 2026)

What Impressed Me in 2025 Was Scoring Every Call

I sat in a Google Cloud briefing in March 2025, before Enterprise Connect. The product was called Customer Engagement Suite. They now call it Gemini Enterprise for Customer Experience.

The piece that stuck was Quality AI. A supervisor used to listen to a few calls and guess about the rest. Google's own docs say that manual check often covers under 1 percent of volume. Quality AI is built to score every conversation against rules you write (Google Cloud, 2025).

I was impressed by that scale. Verizon has the volume to make it matter. 147 million wireless lines at the end of June. About 34 million postpaid accounts. Google's 2025 write-up put 28,000 care reps on a helper tool (Verizon, 2026; Google Cloud, 2025).

The rest of the kit is ordinary contact-center software. A bot talks to the customer. A helper sits next to the human agent. A reporting tool reads topics and mood. Lisa O'Malley said in 2025 that the helper can sit on a phone system you already own. Verizon Business still sells Genesys and Webex Contact Center to other companies. Its own consumer care runs on Google.

Serving each and every one of our customers by name.
Alfonso Villanueva, Verizon (Google Cloud, 2026)

Consumer Is Still Most of the Money

In 2025 Consumer brought in $106.8 billion, about 77 percent of Verizon. Business brought in $29.1 billion, about 21 percent (Verizon, 2026).

In the second quarter of 2026, Consumer revenue was $26.2 billion, down 1.5 percent. Phone and equipment sales inside Consumer fell 22 percent. Wireless and home-internet service inside Consumer rose 3.3 percent to $19.6 billion. The Consumer profit margin was 45.0 percent.

Business revenue was $7.2 billion, up 2.6 percent. The networking and wholesale line inside Business rose 9.6 percent. That is where the Google fiber rental sits (Verizon, 2026).

Consumer wireless and home internet service grew. Phone upgrades fell. The Google fiber rental sits in Business.

They Rent Fiber to Google and Buy Software from Google

On the July earnings call Verizon said Google is renting more than $1 billion of unused fiber and old telephone-building space for data centers. The program is called AI Connect. Three weeks later Google Cloud announced Gemini inside Verizon.

Verizon owns the routes and the buildings. Google pays to use them. Verizon pays Google for Gemini and for the data system under the agents. Google Cloud says Verizon spent years moving old data stores onto that system (Google Cloud, 2026).

What Verizon sells on the consumer side is still postpaid, prepaid, Fios fiber, and 5G Home. On the business side it is wireless, 5G business internet, ThingSpace for connected devices, private 5G, security, and contact-center software it resells. AI Connect is the new wholesale offer: leftover fiber and small data rooms in those old buildings.

Tenorio has said the network software should let Verizon swap models. Claude is in engineering. Gemini is in customer care. He wanted that split.

What I Would Watch

Does Verizon publish how many calls Gemini actually finishes, or does it stay with "most incoming calls"?

Does the Google fiber rental show up as its own revenue line in 2027?

Does the 12.8-point satisfaction gain hold after Gemini is the default, not a three-month test?

About Shashi Bellamkonda

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