Whenever there’s a big event like Super Bowl 2025 this Sunday in New Orleans, the best phone carriers take the opportunity to talk up the upgrades they’re making for the big game. Only when the final whistle blows at the end of Sunday’s game, the improvements around the Caesars Superdome and New Orleans at large will remain long after the Super Bowl LIX circus packs up and moves on.
AT&T, billed as the “neutral host provider” that will support other carriers, is building on work done in 2022 with an upgrade to its distributed antenna system (DAS) that it claims will provide reliable service in and near the Superdome as well as the adjacent Smoothie King Arena. There’s an improved outdoor antenna system to handle tailgaters. The telecom is also highlighting longer-term upgrades in New Orleans, including at hotels, and will have 11 “COWs” (Cells on Wheels) in the area for temporary boosts.
All of the upgrades beyond the wheeled sites are permanent, AT&T’s Madelynn Taylor tells Tom’s Guide.
Other carriers are promising similar network revamps. T-Mobile is refreshing its stadium antenna system, and boasts that its major cell sites near the Superdome will support downloads up to 920Mbps. Capacities at the airport, convention center, hotels, Smoothie King Arena, and French Quarter have also jumped, T-Mobile adds, with download speeds peaking at 975Mbps. There will be few temporary upgrades — just one COW and a SAT/COLT (Satellite Cell on Light Truck) to support NFL broadcasts, spokesperson Mason Miller says.
Verizon, in turn, is promising high-speed C-Band and Ultra Wideband 5G in “every seat, suite, and concourse” in the stadium, along with new fiber optic infrastructure rollouts that will cover highly frequented areas including the Smoothie King Arena, airport, convention center, and Bourbon Street. C-Band sits in a frequency sweet spot, so it ideally offers the meaningful speed boost of 5G without as many coverage problems as high-frequency Ultra Wideband (aka millimeter wave, or mmWave in Verizon-speak).
These upgrades are not only lasting, Verizon’s Lauren Peterson explains, but are reportedly strong enough that the carrier doesn't see the need to parade “fleets of vehicles” to show that it’s upgrading connectivity in the city. That’s as much practical as it is a marketing flex, as just over half of the 61,629 attendees at last year’s Super Bowl were Verizon customers, according to the carrier.
Beyond Super Bowl Sunday
No matter which phone carrier you talk to, you’ll hear vows that these phone network upgrades will help New Orleans residents long after Super Bowl LIX is over.
AT&T is adding more C-Band 5G spectrum downtown, and has four new small cell nodes with C-Band overlaying 69 of them. Meanwhile, T-Mobile president of technology Ulf Ewaldson stresses that bolstered 5G will support businesses and their customers well beyond the football spectacular. Verizon says it’s adding more than 200 small cells and matching antennas that cover the “hottest spots in town,” not just sports arenas and other fan gathering places.
As proof that these aren’t one-time initiatives, the telecoms point to their track record for 2024’s Super Bowl LVIII in Las Vegas, not to mention other sporting events.
T-Mobile blanketed Vegas’ Allegiant Stadium with distributed antennas, added 17 small cell sites city-wide, and made strategic network upgrades at both the airport as well as hotels like Cosmopolitan and Fontainebleau. Verizon spent over two years preparing its network for the game with both stadium upgrades (such as nearly triple the 5G bandwidth versus 2023) and across-the-city capacity growth that included C-Band access.
All of Verizon’s Las Vegas upgrades were meant to stay, Peterson says. That included additional millimeter wave and C-Band radios at Allegiant Stadium as well as better coverage at city fixtures like the Strip, the airport, and the convention center. While there were half as many radios added then as for New Orleans in 2025, that didn’t appear to be an issue given data speeds that were supposedly three times faster than with competitors.
Why the focus on enduring network upgrades? It largely comes down to public perception. At a minimum, this is marketing: by associating permanent upgrades with the Super Bowl, carriers burnish their image and potentially attract more subscribers. You may be more likely to sign up if you know that you’ll get fast speeds when you attend a Saints game next season thanks to all those Superdome upgrades.
There’s a political aspect, too. Congress, regulators, and local governments have routinely investigated cellular availability, including coverage gaps, spectrum allocations, and 5G deployment funding. If carriers highlight what they’re doing to improve service, they theoretically remain in politicians’ good graces.They might receive contracts, secure funds, and avoid regulatory battles.
Why these network improvements matter
Moreover, the firms have acknowledged that forward-thinking network investments can pay off in not-so-direct ways. Taylor notes that many of the AT&T teams involved in Super Bowl LIX upgrades worked on past Super Bowls, and that each event is a learning experience. The “number one lesson is to start planning early,” Taylor adds. AT&T was already prepping the New Orleans overhaul soon after the 2022 NCAA Men’s Final Four basketball weekend in New Orleans.
The communications giant also got to test its revamped service before the football final when Taylor Swift swung by for the Eras Tour in late October 2024. That was an “amazing pressure test,” according to AT&T’s Taylor. While the company says the refined New Orleans network performed “spectacularly” for Swift’s visit, Taylor notes that optimizations have been underway since. The Smoothie King Arena upgrade is currently wrapping up, too.
Other carriers see comparable benefits. Miller says that T-Mobile views major events as a “great way to double down” on permanent network upgrades that are already underway. The carrier has been tying these expansions to events for over a decade, he adds. Verizon, in turn, mentions that this is the first event “of its kind” to be monitored by cloud-based vRAN technology that lets it shift and optimize capacity in real time.
As such, there’s evidence that Super Bowl-linked permanent upgrades will continue, or at least will be heavily advertised when they take place. It’s an opportunity to grab the spotlight, of course, but it also serves as a motivator for the carriers themselves. It tests their ability to manage huge amounts of traffic in concentrated areas, and the know-how they gain can translate to other cities and events. For AT&T and T-Mobile, these are also chances to overtake Verizon and score both practical and symbolic victories.
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