Formula 1 has long been the showcase of bleeding-edge engineering design and manufacturing, and now the races are exemplifying the state of the art in comms, with the latest example arriving from Ericsson and SoftBank in a joint field trial of advanced communication services utilising 5G Standalone (SA) and millimetre wave (mmWave) at the 2026 Japanese Grand Prix.
The trial was conducted as part of Ericsson and SoftBank’s joint activities as event supporters of the F1 Japan Grand Prix held at the Suzuka Circuit from 27 to 29 March. It is said to have marked the highest number of network slices used simultaneously during an event in Japan.
Putting the project into context, Ericsson noted that at large-scale event venues, a wide variety of communication demands occur simultaneously, including transmitting broadcast video and processing cashless payments, plus attendees posting to social media and viewing and uploading videos.
In the trial, Ericsson and SoftBank verified the effectiveness of “network control” to optimise communication quality for each specific use case on SoftBank’s commercial network within the Grand Prix venue.
To facilitate operations, the two companies built five independent network slices, including mmWave communication, on SoftBank’s commercial network and provided them simultaneously to users at the venue.
To prepare for the simultaneous operation of the use cases, Ericsson and SoftBank deployed triple-band Massive MIMO (AIR6476) to achieve energy-efficient and high-capacity communications, added more mmWave radios (AIR1281) for the mmWave use cases, and carried out detailed network design.
This approach allowed them to offer connectivity optimised for specific use cases, and the result was said to be “significantly” improved communication quality for general attendees through increased and optimised network capacity.
The use cases demonstrated included high-quality communication for 5G SA users, extended reality (XR), cashless payment support, mmWave backhaul for public Wi-Fi, and mmWave 5G wireless camera video transmission.
In more depth, these showed how to improve network performance by allocating more radio bandwidth to users subscribed to SoftBank’s 5G SA and how a dedicated network slice can deliver an XR experience event that requires high bandwidth and low latency. Payment terminals at select stores were able to gain stable private 5G connections, and public Wi-Fi for SoftBank and Y!mobile users was delivered through fixed wireless access (FWA).
5G SA users experienced approximately four times faster downlink speeds and more than 14 times faster uplink speeds, while 5G NSA users saw improvements of approximately 1.5 times and six times, respectively.
Furthermore, by using network slicing and Ericsson’s 5G Advanced features – such as throughput control, low latency optimisation and mmWave control – the companies said they were able to control bandwidth and latency, optimise resource allocation according to each use case, and optimise the overall mobile network.
While providing stable communication services to general users, the network facilitated smooth payment processing for payment terminals, which require stringent criteria, despite the weekend network congestion. Notably, for XR, which requires low latency, the companies confirmed they had reduced downlink latency over the radio section by a tenth compared with general 5G SA users during the same time period.
In addition, and crucially for an application where the quality bar rises constantly, the network provided a wireless camera and video transmission environment for live broadcasting.
As with payment processing, the network maintained video streaming quality and was said to have “dramatically” improved communication speeds and connection capacity compared with the previous year’s event. Ericsson and SoftBank said this was confirmation of an environment where users could seamlessly post to social media and livestream even under heavy traffic conditions.
