Super Bowl LX: The World’s Largest 5G Showcase
sebastianbarros.substack.com
Feb. 9, 2026, 9:34 a.m.
Super Bowl LX is not just the biggest sporting event in the world. It is the most extreme connectivity experiment ever deployed in a single venue. More than 35 terabytes of in-venue traffic are expected to be generated by roughly 70,000 spectators, each acting as a live content producer. This load is not driven by messaging or browsing, but by uplink-intensive behavior: high-definition video uploads, multi-angle replays, immersive applications, real-time social sharing, and continuous background streaming.To meet that demand, Levi’s Stadium is running the most ultra-dense stack that combines mmWave, mid-band 5G, Wi-Fi 7, private 5G networks, network slicing, satellite-backed mobile cells, and real-time AI-driven optimization. That is why Super Bowl LX has become the place where Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, Ericsson, and Nokia show everything they have. It is a full-stack stress test of the future network. Let us break it down layer by layer.