What's Up with Tech?

5G On Demand, Anywhere

• Evan Kirstel

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Ever wished you could roll into a venue and flip on flawless connectivity like a light switch? We sit down with T-Mobile for Business at their booth to unpack a portable private 5G kit built for speed, security, and control—ready to power live broadcasts, pop-up events, and mission-critical enterprise workflows in a matter of hours.

We walk through how a compact setup supports roughly a thousand authenticated users with private SIMs and delivers low, predictable latency around 10 ms. On the media side, we showcase Sony camera workflows that push clean video uplinks over 5G, moving footage straight to the cloud without cables or SD card handoffs. Real-world throughput numbers—200 Mbps up and 500 down on the standard kit, with variants that reach one-gigabit uplink—open the door to remote production, instant highlights, and multi-angle streaming that holds up even when venues are packed.

Beyond broadcasting, we explore where private 5G outperforms congested Wi‑Fi: conventions, stadiums, factory floors with mobile robots, and hospital environments where reliability and privacy matter most. With mid-band N77 spectrum, the kit balances capacity and coverage for arenas and sprawling outdoor courses, from golf and marathons to drone racing. End-to-end security, SIM-based access, and local data handling keep traffic off unknown networks, simplifying compliance while boosting confidence for sensitive operations. And when AI vision services meet strong uplink, producers can auto-tag, translate, and distribute content in near real time.

If you care about reliable event connectivity, secure video backhaul, or standing up enterprise-grade networks on demand, this conversation delivers practical details you can put to work right away. Follow the show, share it with a colleague who battles bad Wi‑Fi, and leave a review with your biggest 5G question so we can tackle it next.

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SPEAKER_00:

And I'm here at the T Mobile for Business booth, and we're talking with Mark about the 5G private uh networking solution. Um, and everything is on display here, Bark. How are you? I'm doing great.

SPEAKER_01:

Uh so glad to be here. And we've got our uh um one of our kits here, uh one of our highly mobile kits that we can set up within hours at an event.

SPEAKER_00:

So let's talk about that. So, how would you describe 5G on demand? This is a a pretty new approach to 5G networking.

SPEAKER_01:

It is, it's uh completely private, and it's we've designed it for events, whether it's broadcasting or uh some other type of uh company event. Uh and we have Sony cameras set up right now with uh Sony PDT we're broadcasting over 5G. Like I said, it sets up uh quickly. We've got low latency, about 10 milliseconds.

SPEAKER_00:

So if we're doing a live broadcast, it works great. And this is not just an on-demand solution, but an enterprise solution. What kind of environments, whether it's healthcare, manufacturing, are you seeing the sweet spot for this?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, we have customers today that are using it for uh robotics uh for workers. And many more, I'm sure. Many more.

SPEAKER_00:

The world's your oyster.

SPEAKER_01:

Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_00:

Um and what what what's the underlying technology behind your your private 5G solution that makes it so like flexible, adaptable, and also scalable because you could support an entire stadium full of fans, right?

SPEAKER_01:

Uh well well well uh yes, I can. Um with this kit, we can support up to about a thousand users. Oh wow, yeah. So small kit, a thousand users on 5G, and they can be selected with uh private sims, all of the data space vocal, like I said.

SPEAKER_00:

And I imagine for for like ad hoc events, what a great solution where you have typically really poor Wi-Fi coverage or no coverage. Well, it can be a supplemental Wi-Fi. Okay.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, so if your Wi-Fi is congested, we can come up with uh private 52 or on N77 Spectrum, which uh allow you know mid great mid-band spectrum.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, N77 is an interesting standard. Maybe talk a little bit about how this is the underlying spectrum enabling all these new well, it's part of our layer tape, right?

SPEAKER_01:

And it's bit band spectrum, and it's specifically designed for us to pop-up events and custom uh solutions for customers, whether it's long-term or short term. We've got customers in manufacturing environments, uh remote controlled vehicles, uh hospitals, and like I said, uh pop-up private network events.

SPEAKER_00:

Incredible. And one of the advantages of 5G, of course, is security, end-to-end security encryption, uh privacy, data protection. And um Wi-Fi, you know, again, traditionally has questions, you're always wondering about what Wi-Fi hotspot you're connected to. Is it encrypted or is your device set up? And this sort of eliminates a lot of that.

SPEAKER_01:

It it does. All of the data space workable, like I said earlier, uh all of the data space workable. Yeah, uh, so so it's not you know like transiting unknown networks, etc. And uh the super low latency capacity. Uh with this kit, we're seeing you know 200 up 200 megabit upload speeds and 500 down. So that's more than enough to support the uh I think the needs of a lot of pop-up events.

SPEAKER_00:

And when you talk about a 5G private network, the endpoints could be any input, any SIM card, so it could be laptops, iPads, uh handheld devices, no modifications, no special software.

SPEAKER_01:

Correct, yeah. Any IoT devices are used.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, extraordinary. Well, it's a big jump in connectivity.

SPEAKER_01:

And we have other variations of the kits that can do up to a gigabit upload speeds.

SPEAKER_00:

Wow.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

So that is really taking connectivity to the next level. It is, it is, and it is uh uh it's also 5G standalone. I love the broadcast setup you have here. You know, broadcasting has been left out of the kind of IT side of the world for a long time. It's been like A V magic, but now you're bringing A V and IT together, which is kind of cool.

SPEAKER_01:

Uh exactly. Yeah, and so we've we've we've really looked at the whole journalism and broadcasting on arena where um the device was such as the Sony T and uh get fantastic upload speeds though. We've tested the Sony to do uh one gigabit uploads.

SPEAKER_00:

Amazing. So talk about getting your footage up to the cloud like right away. We used to carry that around on you know little SD cards or uh or drives, right?

SPEAKER_01:

Forget all that. And if you incorporate some AI vision into it, uh it'll organize and sort, uh, translate and uh rebroadcast out to uh all of your various platforms.

SPEAKER_00:

Amazing. What what a great opportunity for large distributed sporting events where you have so much geography like golf or or or soccer.

SPEAKER_01:

You start thinking about other events where where normally a drone racing, I don't know, I talked to the other day about drone racing.

SPEAKER_00:

That is so cool.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, you know, they go out there, the cameras, they save it to SD cards, etc. And then later on in the day they upload it and said, you know, we can we can go to an event like that and have a kit set up within literally within an hour or two, cover the entire course or 80-90% of the course, and uh stream live. Why wait?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I love that. Conventions, events. I go to events every other week, and it's always a question mark, not with T-Mobile, but in many cases, we're we're in a basement here, we're underground, we're indoors, and you never are quite guaranteed connectivity. You know, it's probably gonna be good, but this is uh an extraordinary solution. Congrats on bringing it to market.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, thank you.