Major League Baseball opened the 2026 season with a technological first: the Automated Ball-Strike or ABS Challenge System, powered by T-Mobile’s private 5G network, is now deployed across all 29 U.S. ballparks. While headlines focus on umpire challenges and strike zones, the real story for information technology professionals lies beneath the surface — in the network infrastructure that enables split-second decisions in environments where failure simply isn’t an option.