On direct-to-phone, they finally swallowed pride and wrote a $100M check to AST SpaceMobile in May 2024, grabbing access to 850 MHz “premium” spectrum for space coverage and promising to erase U.S. dead zones. Nice pivot for a carrier that used to roll its eyes at AST. In February 2025 they and AST pulled off a live video call to a standard handset via BlueBird-2. It’s a demo, not a network, but it proves the RF link isn’t science fiction. Commercial ubiquity still depends on AST actually launching a lot of hardware; most credible timetables point to broader service only shaping up through 2026.

While they wait for real D2D capacity, Verizon plastered over the near term with Skylo’s NTN overlay. In plain English: emergency messaging and basic SMS over GEO satellites on select Androids, integrated like roaming so care teams can say “always on” without shipping anyone a satphone. They started lighting that up in late 2024 and expanded it in March 2025 with “satellite texting to any device.” It’s a pragmatic stopgap; it’s not broadband.

For rural backhaul, they’re still married to Amazon’s Kuiper MOU from 2021. That marriage has been long on vows and short on date nights. Kuiper only began deploying production birds in April 2025; Amazon says customer service starts late 2025. Until Kuiper has coverage and ground kit in the field, Verizon’s “LEO backhaul” is a line item in a roadmap deck.

Competitive reality check: T-Mobile and Starlink actually launched retail satellite texting this summer and are marching to data later in 2025. Verizon’s answer is Skylo texts now and AST later. In other words, their consumers get a basic satellite lifeline today while T-Mobile gets the headlines. If AST’s rollout slips, that gap becomes a narrative problem, not just an engineering one.

Then there’s the FAA mess. Verizon won the 15-year, ~$2.4B FENS contract in 2023 to modernize the agency’s comms backbone. Early 2025 brought breathless reports that Starlink would snatch it. The FAA later told Congress and press it wasn’t replacing Verizon and wouldn’t rely on satellites alone for safety-critical comms. Translation: politics made noise; the integrator still has the ball but also a spotlight on deadlines.