GoKawiilEach year, as the Super Bowl approaches, all three major US carriers announce their latest upgrades to ensure the stadium hosting the Big Game has enough high-speed network capacity to handle the hordes of fans attending with a smartphone in every pocket. But every year, some are left complaining that they couldn't post their bragging rights live because everyone was trying to send messages, photos and videos all at the same time.
Just four months after this year's Super Bowl, the game's site in Santa Clara, California, was transformed -- its Levi's logo famously covered up -- to host several FIFA World Cup games. For the Paraguay vs. Australia matchup on June 25, it was the fifth time in two weeks that the nearly 69,000-seat arena was packed with fans eager to watch the world's biggest soccer tournament.
The matches have drawn millions more eyeballs than the annual NFL championship, from viewers at home to the thousands of people who have come from all over the world to watch them live -- and who will all be reaching for their phones at the same time when their team sings the national anthem or scores a goal.
The San Francisco Bay Area Stadium is not alone. This World Cup is being played out across three countries for the first time ever -- Canada, Mexico and the United States -- so there are plenty of chances for host stadiums to fail to deliver enough cell service to the tens of thousands of people traveling to matches every day.
I looked into what each carrier did to improve its network ahead of the World Cup at the 11 US host stadiums and stress-tested the networks in the Bay Area to see if they would hold up to the strain on game day.
Putting the networks to the test at a World Cup match
While my eyes were on my beloved Socceroos the whole match, I was also focused on how much of the game I could capture on my phone and send to friends and family watching at home. Using a Samsung Galaxy S23 Plus on Verizon, a Motorola Razr connected to T-Mobile via Mint Mobile and an iPhone 17 Pro Max connected to AT&T's new Turbo Live offering, I and a couple of CNET colleagues ran various network tests during the Paraguay vs. Australia match on June 25.
With 68,827 fans present at the match, many of them with more than one device -- we had six phones between three of us -- that's a lot of people trying to use the networks at once.
Sending photos and videos
WhatsApp/Screenshot by CNET
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