5G Capabilities Pave Path for Augmented Reality in Stadiums, Arenas

Tabatha Wethal Headshot
Nr Mariners T Mo Park Sept21
Photo courtesy of T-Mobile

More than 30 years ago, some jaws dropped when an animated Jaws’ big toothy mouth opened and closed around the fictional Marty McFly in Back to the Future II, a movie about a time-traveling teen who makes his way from 1989 to 2015. McFly cowers and covers his head as the augmented-reality ad featuring a stories-high shark chomps down on him, then disappears.

Mixed-reality happenings are increasingly commonplace here in the 2020s. Recently, a Carolina Panther ran across Bank of America Stadium and climbed a scoreboard, and a fictional airship landed at the Oregon Ducks’ Autzen Stadium for a Halo video game promotion. These spectacles are happening in real time, just like McFly experienced, thanks to technology that certainly wasn’t ready in 1989, nor in 2015: the fifth generation of broadband cellular networks, or 5G.

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