Can Wi-Fi 7 fix your social media posts at crowded stadiums? It's more complex

Making a video call from a packed stadium at a concert or the rugby is like trying to shout a coded message to your friend across the dancefloor at a wedding, when the opening riff of Nkalakatha just dropped. Yes, even in 2025 – six years since the first 5G network was deployed in South Africa (SA).

You have full bars. The 5G icon is mocking you from the status bar. But, your Instagram Story won’t upload, the Facetime call won’t connect, and your WhatsApp messages are stuck on a single tick.

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The failure, unfortunately, is not simply a bandwidth shortage; it’s a collision of physics, legacy infrastructure from the 2010 Fifa World Cup era, and a regulatory environment that is only just beginning to catch up with reality.

Welcome to the ‘cocktail party’

Inside a stadium bowl, thousands of devices try to reach a handful of base stations. When they struggle to get through the interference, they ramp up their transmission power. Multiply that by a sporting or concert crowd, and the background radio noise floor spikes. It’s called the cocktail party effect.

This tanking of the Signal-to-Interference-plus-Noise Ratio (SINR) means the tower can’t distinguish your packet from the chaos. The tower can see you, but it can’t hear a word you’re saying (Mandoza is playing).

What makes this worse is that most South African stadiums are still running Distributed Antenna Systems (DAS) from when Philip was here in 2010. They were built for feature phone calls and SMS, not modern uplink-heavy behaviour like uploading 4K TikToks and livestreams.

These systems provide coverage, hence the full bars, but they lack the capacity Physical Resource Blocks (PRBs) to handle the massive uplink demand.

Why 5G didn’t rescue your video call

Nokia’s chief technology officer for network infrastructure in Southern and Eastern Africa, Jan Liebenberg, says despite all the hype, 5G alone won’t magically solve stadium failures.

The issue isn’t the technology – it’s the lack of specialised high-density installations. “There’s stadium solutions… you need to actually deploy a stadium solution,” he explains. Nokia is in discussions with operators “to see [how we] approach the stadiums and maybe… add some more stadium capacity”.

Cape Town Stadium (DHL Stadium) knows it has a connectivity problem... The stadium is also preparing to overhaul its public Wi-Fi network in 2025 – a project expected to land just as Wi-Fi 7 reaches commercial maturity

The hurdle, according to Liebenberg, isn’t just technological, there’s a regulatory side. In SA, mobile networks are the domain of the operators (Vodacom, MTN, Telkom, etc.). A stadium cannot simply buy and install its own 5G private network to serve fans because the spectrum is licensed exclusively to the operators.

The operators, meanwhile, are battling their own capital expenditure constraints.

The Norse code

Ericsson’s perspective is more pragmatic, it’s about making those eventual deployments more efficient. Ante Mihovilovic, VP and head of networks for Europe, Middle East and Africa, told Daily Maverick that the company’s competitive edge comes from radio gear that doesn’t burn a hole in operators’ power bills.

“The total power consumption of the site is quite an important part of the total opex (operational expenditure) that the operators have,” he says. Ericsson leans heavily on hardware improvements and “applying AI inside the products and AI on top of the network” to reduce this.

That matters because South African operators weigh every investment against operating costs. Stadium gear is expensive, high-maintenance and used only on match days. Power efficiency becomes part of the business case.

Why can’t stadiums just fix it themselves?

Internationally, you increasingly see stadiums run their own private 5G networks. Tottenham’s ground has it. The Las Vegas Sphere basically is a telecoms node.

But in SA, regulations block this. A venue can install Wi-Fi because it operates under a “lightly licensed” regime. But 4G or 5G? Impossible without owning licensed spectrum.

The stadium “cannot have 4G or 5G infrastructure because you need to have license around that”.

As Liebenberg puts it: “Regulation in Africa, South Africa and Africa prohibits… stadiums or even factories… to deploy their own licence-based solutions.”

Instead, they rely on operators. Operators then must get municipal approvals for masts or antennas – and that brings its own bog of paperwork.

Cape Town, for example, requires visual impact assessments, heritage considerations, and strict compliance with the Telecommunication Mast Infrastructure Policy. Hiding antennas inside the stadium structure might look nice, but it kills radio performance.

It was a clear black night

Icasa knows spectrum scarcity and municipal red tape are throttling network capacity. Its latest tool is the Draft Regulations on Dynamic Spectrum Access (DSA), released earlier this year.

DSA allows unused chunks of spectrum – “white spaces” – to be shared dynamically and geographically. It’s aimed at high-demand urban areas where operators run out of runway.

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The regulator is looking specifically at 3,800-4,200MHz (prime 5G expansion band) and 5,925-6,425MHz (Wi-Fi 6E).

If Wi-Fi 6E and soon Wi-Fi 7 take up more of the device traffic, it frees mobile networks to handle mission-critical services. Icasa hopes DSA will “promote the emergence of new digital radio technologies,” alleviate congestion, and allow more creative deployments.

It’s not a magic wand, but it gives stadiums an avenue to offload capacity without needing their own mobile spectrum licence.

Wait, what’s Wi-Fi 7?
Wi-Fi 7 isn’t a gimmick. It handles high-density environments better, has wider channels, supports Multi-Link Operation (letting your device use two frequency bands at once), and can push more consistent uplink speeds. In stadium conditions, that matters far more than raw download capacity.

Think of Wi-Fi 7 as adding extra lanes to a highway, while 5G is upgrading the speed limit. You need both, but lanes come first when everyone’s trying to leave the stadium carpark at once.

Game of phones

Cape Town Stadium (DHL Stadium) knows it has a connectivity problem. COO Louw Visagie says the venue currently runs two DAS installations, and “our service providers are in the process of upgrading these systems independently”.

The stadium is also preparing to overhaul its public Wi-Fi network in 2025 – a project expected to land just as Wi-Fi 7 reaches commercial maturity. The goal is to “help take some pressure off the cellular networks during high-attendance events”.

Stadium Wi-Fi is more than just free internet. It’s the only legal way a stadium can self-provision high-capacity uplink.

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If designed properly, it can offload thousands of devices and limit RF interference. Visagie says the upgrades are part of “our ongoing commitment to improving facilities and ensuring reliable connectivity”.

South African fans don’t want much. Just the ability to upload a video of a try before the shot clock runs out. With the right regulatory shifts and smarter in-stadium builds, 2026 might finally be the year your stories go through. DM