What you need to know
- Verizon has spent $80 million to build out its network in Miami and especially around the Super Bowl stadium area.
- The company is also hosting a viewing event and 5G network technology demos all week.
- A stadium makes an ideal demonstration point for Verizon's mmWave 5G.
Verizon's 5G network uses mmWave technology, which can produce lightning fast data speed for crowds of customers at once, but has trouble with things like walls and long distances. Enter the Super Bowl, an event where a lot of people will sit in a large circle with no walls between them. This is the perfect demonstration space for mmWave technology, and Verizon is betting $80 million that the downtown Miami area near Hard Rock stadium will be fertile ground for planting the seeds of its 5G plans. That's the total cost of the hardware expansion the company undertook for this singular event.
Verizon says that areas around the Miami airports, in downtown, and around Bayfront Park will also see expanded 5G coverage. At Bayfront Park, Verizon is sponsoring a Super Bowl Live event with demonstrations of technology that benefits from the high speeds and low latency of The Network's 5G network. The carrier promises an immersive, on-the-field experience at the event, which will stay open through February 1, the day before the big game.
While a stadium may be ideal for 5G coverage, the timing does seem a bit premature on Verizon's part, as the carrier brags that this will be the first Super Bowl in which attendees will be able to use a 5G network on a commercially available device. Of course, there are a scant few phones in Verizon's lineup with 5G networking — the LG V50 ThinQ 5G and the Samsung Galaxys Note and S10 5G. It seems unlikely that many attendees will own a Verizon 5G phone, though this means the lucky few who do will hog the new network and achieve warp speeds the likes of which they may not encounter again.
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