Goldman Sachs Talks

Hans Vestberg, Chairman and CEO of Verizon Communications

In this episode of Talks at GS, Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg discusses the impact of the pandemic on global connectivity, the expanded use of Verizon’s network for consumers and businesses, and the future of 5G. 

On adapting the network throughout the pandemic: “So the network has performed very well during this pandemic, even though traffic has moved dramatically from peak hours… So I think that also tells you how well we’ve built our network over the years. At the same time, our brand resilience and our brand strength has, of course, helped us in this crisis as well. And then we decided very early on, on a very clear strategy of how we manage the company in this pandemic, which basically was a three-pronged governance with crisis management, a business-as-usual team… And finally, we have a team that is looking at opportunities because a lot of new societal behaviors are coming up and, as a technology company, we have to look at those opportunities. So, that’s how we’ve been managing it.”  

On the future of 5G: “We want it to be transformative. We don’t want it to be inferior to a 4G network or something like that. So for us, we have all the time we want to delight our customers with something exceptional as we have done all the time since the start of Verizon that was basically 20 years ago this year. So, that’s how we’re thinking.” 


This episode was filmed as part of the 2020 Goldman Sachs Research Communacopia Conference.