Private cellular networks — particularly those using CBRS spectrum — are emerging as critical to the Olympic wireless landscape
The Los Angeles 2028 Olympics will be both a sporting spectacle and a technological showcase, featuring connected and secure venues, immersive fan experiences, and world-class broadcast coverage.
In early August, the White House established a Task Force to coordinate federal support for the Games’ security, transportation, and entry/exit processes. FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, named as a member of that task force, issued a statement emphasizing the critical importance of radio spectrum management in the Games’ successful execution.
Chairman Carr rightly recognized that the Games will hinge on a huge diversity of wireless devices, technologies and applications, especially for broadcast, security and event coordination.
Given active discussions about future spectrum auctions, it is timely and important to recognize the role of private cellular networks, and especially those based on CBRS spectrum, as an essential part of the Olympic wireless landscape in supporting security and venue access, media coverage, and fans’ connectivity.
Wireless at the Olympics
The 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games will be one of the largest sporting events ever hosted in the U.S., with more than 800 individual events spread across more than 50 indoor and outdoor sites — plus non-sports structures such as media and operations centers, athletes’ accommodation, visitors’ hotels, and innumerable ancillary events and activities.
Millions of fans’ personal smartphones and many thousands of other specialized wireless devices will operate simultaneously across broad swathes of the RF spectrum. This will include critical applications such as timing systems for events, cameras for both broadcast and surveillance functions, radio communications for event coordination and security, homeland defense operations and a huge array of media and content activities.
An enormous number of wireless cameras and microphones — ranging from traditional TV cameras to systems mounted on drones and helicopters — will all need rock-solid, low-latency connections.
Secondary “backhaul” wireless links will also connect sites and broadcasters’ trucks over long distances to remote production or coordination centers. These may employ microwave and satellite connections, which also have to share the RF spectrum.
Previous Olympics and similar events have demonstrated the complexity of managing the RF spectrum to avoid interference, with 100s or 1000s of temporary and location-specific licenses granted to the relevant parties and tightly monitored for compliance. LA2028 will follow the same pattern, but likely at an even larger scale.
Private 5G networks at sports events
While some of these systems use dedicated and specialized wireless technologies, others rely on more conventional cellular or Wi-Fi radios. Private 5G is increasingly used for connecting broadcast cameras, devices such as drones, handhelds for security staff, wireless payment terminals, and entry/exit gates. They can be configured for the venues’ specific needs, with dedicated coverage and local control.
Existing public mobile carrier networks will be insufficient to simultaneously meet all the requirements for the diverse Olympic venues and specialized applications, visiting fans, and non-participating LA citizens and businesses. Even using advanced 5G techniques such as “network slicing”, public networks’ limitations will likely require deployment of dedicated “private” 5G networks.
This reflects a broader trend. In recent years, there has been growing use of private 4G and 5G networks at sports venues or temporary locations, including at the 2024 Paris Olympics. In the U.S., private networks based on lower-power, locally-accessed, dynamic CBRS spectrum have been deployed at numerous sports venues and one-off events, including:
- Dignity Health Sports Park in LA: This soccer stadium has had a CBRS network since 2021, used for applications such as remote parking lot surveillance, mobile ticket scanning, mobile media, and mobile Point of Sale (PoS). This venue is now going to become the host for the 2028 Paralympics cycling, tennis and archery events.
- NFL stadiums: The National Football League rolled out a CBRS-based private LTE network in all 30 stadiums in 2021 to handle coaches’ communications during games.
- Petco Park in San Diego: A CBRS network is used for staff operations (such as point-of-sale terminals and ticket scanning on iPads).
- Xfinity Mobile Arena in Philadelphia: The CBRS private network is used for connecting cameras around the venue to the arena’s center-hung scoreboard, for displaying HD video clips in real-time, during basketball and ice hockey matches. It also supports other applications, such as security cameras.
- Miami’s F1 circuit: A CBRS network has been deployed for back-of-house functions at the Miami Grand Prix, for applications such as point-of-sale terminals, ticket scanning, and photo uploads for professional photographers.
- Sawgrass golf course in Florida: The 2024 Players Championship, part of the PGA tour, used a private CBRS 5G network for real-time video streaming applications and back-of-house analytics tasks such as crowd density.
There are many other examples of private 5G used for sporting events and venues around the world. However, the U.S. is probably the most advanced market, and with the most widespread use of the technology. LA2028 should be a showcase for this global leadership.
Why CBRS will be essential for LA 2028
While the details about wireless systems for the Olympic and Paralympic games have not been made public, the importance of CBRS at so many sports venues in California and across the U.S. suggests it will serve multiple important roles at LA2028. As outlined above, private 5G will likely be used for collection of video footage, point-of-sale equipment, security cameras and communications, and perhaps ticket and other admission/access systems.
As well as the Games’ and competitive venues’ own CBRS networks, broadcasters and other venue-specific networks will likely deploy the technology, for applications ranging from connecting robots and drones to giving better indoor wireless signal for public networks.
CBRS is also helpful for “offloading” some coordination and administration headaches from the organizers and the FCC itself. Large events like the Olympics often need huge spectrum management teams, working cooperatively but sometimes with manual negotiations and practices. The Paris Olympics involved about 23,000 frequency assignments, a dedicated booking portal, and various other tools and processes. Because CBRS is an automated, dynamic system, it can reduce the requirement for some assignments of spectrum to be made manually. In fact, it could represent a potential mechanism for other bands as well.
Ensuring continuity of CBRS
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act passed in 2025 calls for the FCC and NTIA to identify and auction large swathes of spectrum for future mobile use by the major carriers, clearing existing users or relocating them to other bands. One leading mobile carrier has already called for clearing and auctioning the current CBRS band, between 3.55-3.7GHz.
This would be a huge error.
Many observers have already noted the risks that would pose to the U.S. base of advanced manufacturing, energy and oil/gas sectors, plus rural broadband providers, all of which increasingly rely on CBRS-based networks.
The Olympics — and the U.S. sports world more broadly — is another area for the FCC to consider when it reviews CBRS spectrum policy.
For operational success at the Olympics, losing CBRS or seeing it substantially changed before 2028 would be a significant problem. Many of the use cases discussed in this article for venues’ private 5G or other temporary event networks assume the continued existence of a shared band, with lightly licensed access.
If instead the band were auctioned exclusively to one or two major carriers, Olympic organizers and global broadcaster partners would find themselves with fewer options for connectivity. It may not be possible to negotiate with those licensees, obtain the levels of control and setup customization required, or find alternative spectrum that their current devices support.
The timeline is also a major concern. Even if CBRS users were offered another band to move to, it would take many years to build an ecosystem (including chipsets, equipment, and coordination systems) around the new frequency. It took the better part of a decade to get the CBRS ecosystem to where it is today; doing that all over again in a new band, in time for 2028, would be impossible.
Even major rule-changes to CBRS, such as higher power limits, could impact existing and planned deployments, as new modelling, testing and design would be required to ensure no risks of interference. Modifications to existing installed CBRS systems would be complex and disruptive to venue readiness.
For regulators and policymakers, the message is clear: keep CBRS intact through 2028 and beyond. The band’s unique sharing regime is supporting exactly the kind of connectivity innovations that the Olympics will likely showcase. In Chairman Carr’s words, the FCC and federal government must do everything to ensure the 2028 Olympics are a triumph; protecting the spectrum that Olympic venues and applications may rely on is essential to deliver on that goal.
