IT Hardware & Networking Equipment: Lateral Reads from Service Providers

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IT Hardware & Networking Equipment: Lateral Reads from Service Providers

Technology | IT Hardware & Networking

July 24, 2026

Amit Daryanani IT Hardware & Networking Equipment:

415-800-0185

amit.daryanani@evercoreisi.com Lateral Reads from Service Providers

Irvin Liu ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW: This week T, TMUS, and VZ (all covered

415-800-0183 by Kutgun Maral) reported earnings and we see implications for ADTN,

irvin.liu@evercoreisi.com CSCO, and CIEN within our coverage. Below are our key takeaways.

Caden Dahl

212-653-9034 Implications for Our Coverage:

Caden.Dahl@evercoreisi.com ◼ Scale-Across Continues to Grow: Across all three prints AI data-

Victor Santiago center interconnect, or scale-across, is becoming a genuine growth

212-653-9014

vector rather than a niche. Verizon signed a dark-fiber agreement Victor.Santiago@evercoreISI.com

with a hyperscaler valued at over $1B to connect data centers,

Hannah Liu

pointed to additional deals expected by year end worth multiple 212-812-2905

hannah.liu@evercoreISI.com billions of dollars over the next several years, and characterized

the AI infrastructure build-out as one of the largest capital cycles of

a lifetime. It is leaning on its long-haul and metro fiber and

retrofitting central offices into inference-edge sites, with demand

shifting toward data-center-to-data-center connectivity in both dark

and lit forms. Even T-Mobile placed AI compute squarely in wireline

transport and data centers rather than on mobile networks. We

view this as a positive for CIEN, whose coherent and DCI portfolio

sits directly in this demand, and as supportive for CSCO via Acacia

coherent and routing.

◼ AI Traffic Growth Reframing the Long-Term Opportunity: All

three operators sized or located AI-driven bandwidth in a way that