If you’ve been online recently, you’ve met Freddy. This German soccer fan’s trip across America for the World Cup made him a global sensation. He declared Taco Bell the holy land, marveled at Walmart, and completed the full American pilgrimage at Buc-ee’s.
And as Freddy visits our cities and rural communities, his posts travel over the U.S.’s world-leading wireless networks. That nationwide reach is a remarkable achievement. It reflects hundreds of billions in wireless industry investment and is the reason more than 98% of Americans have 5G coverage today.
Freddy’s story is a small example of how the World Cup is serving as a wireless showcase. He is one of millions from every corner of the globe discovering America and sharing every moment. Together, they are creating one of our most demanding connectivity events.
Consider the gameday experience. Spectators will generate more than 50 terabytes of data per match. That is three years of high-definition video compressed into three hours. Now multiply that across 104 matches in 11 host cities, two months of fan festivals, parades of bagpipe-playing Scotsmen, and transit hubs packed with visitors. And it’s not only the fans: referee cameras, connected match balls, live broadcasts, and first responders keeping crowds safe. Wireless carries it all.
America’s wireless providers spent more than two years getting ready. They installed thousands of new antennas inside venues, deployed small cells and temporary towers around them, brought more spectrum online, and boosted capacity by up to five times.
But that investment might not be enough, and so carriers are using artificial intelligence to manage network traffic at an unprecedented scale. AI predicts spikes in demand, automatically shifts capacity, and constantly adjusts to head off congestion. The result is roughly 30% more efficiency. When people ask me what an AI-powered network looks like, my answer this summer is simple. Unlock your phone, open a streaming app, and pull up a match.
This is a preview of something much bigger. Wireless and AI are becoming the same story. They are the two largest sources of private investment in the U.S. economy, and they increasingly depend on each other. AI has moved out of the data center, and the next wave is physical AI: robots, sensors, and machines coordinating in the real world. None of it works without reliable wireless. Networks, in turn, are leaning on AI to manage complexity humans cannot handle by hand, and 6G will be AI-native from the start.
But AI is not just more data. It is a different kind of traffic, real-time, two-way, and unpredictable. AI-driven traffic is projected to grow three times faster than everything else and to make up nearly a third of all broadband traffic within the decade. Accenture estimates $1.4 trillion in lost economic output if our networks cannot keep pace.
To meet this wave of AI demand and deploy 6G by 2030, we need wireless connectivity ready for the moment. It begins with the spectrum. The good news is that Congress and the president have charted a path to bring 800 megahertz of new spectrum to market, and this month the FCC held its first major auction in years.
An upper C-Band auction next summer under FCC Chairman Carr’s strong leadership can put a major block of mid-band spectrum into service by 2030. Three government-held bands follow: 2.7 GHz, where radar modernization is clearing the way; 7 GHz, now under federal review and poised to be a new global band; and 4 GHz, the largest opportunity and already aligned with global standards. The job now is to hit the accelerator and auction at least two of those bands by 2028, so they are ready to go in 2030 to meet consumer and innovation demands.
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But spectrum alone is not enough. Turning that spectrum into coverage takes infrastructure. U.S. wireless providers already invest roughly $30 billion in their networks every single year, the product of investment-friendly policies, free markets, and a culture of entrepreneurship. We can extend that advantage by modernizing the permitting and siting rules that decide how fast towers go up. And a national challenge calls for a national approach, not a patchwork of state rules.
The World Cup is a small preview of that future, two months of wireless and AI working as one. The same convergence on display in our stadiums will define the decade ahead, and meeting it will demand action now on spectrum and infrastructure. Get those right, and we can lead the wireless and AI breakthroughs that will define the future.
Ajit Pai served as the Federal Communications Commission chairman during the first Trump administration and is the current CTIA CEO.