The Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics engineers have set up a telecom center to support 5G services and other cutting-edge technologies.

Put into operation on Jan 10 in Beijing, the Telecom Technology Operations Center (TTOC) is the "brain" or "nerve center" for the Games.

"It took us 14 days to build the center, which covers an area of 300 square meters," said Liu Shenshen, the center's manager. "During the Olympic Games, a total of 63 staff will work here as tech support."

One of the features of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics is that the events will be held in different locations, which requires cutting-edge tech to ensure timely communication between those locations to keep everyone on the same page.

One of the VR systems could let staff receive match updates from every venue in real-time, including those in Zhangjiakou, and of course, in Beijing.

"We also provide system maintenance for the venues via remote technology," added Liu. "For example, if our network equipment in the venue were to break or fail, our experts could do the repair without getting out of the center by giving instructions to on-site technicians hundreds of kilometers away."

Another thing making the Beijing Winter Olympics unique is that most of the venues are going to be covered with 5G. Staff at the center said this will give the audience a better viewing experience.

"This year, due to the pandemic, most of the audience will be watching the events online," noted Zeng Wei, a mobile network optimization expert at the center. "Our 5G networks in these venues could provide a maximum video upload speed of 500 megabytes per second and a maximum download rate of 1.5 gigabytes per second."