Report excerpt: SEC moving slowly on stadium Wi-Fi deployments

Jordan-Hare Stadium, Auburn University

Jordan-Hare Stadium, Auburn University

Editor’s note: The following is an excerpt from our recent Stadium Tech Report series COLLEGE FOOTBALL ISSUE, a 40-page in-depth look at Wi-Fi and DAS deployment trends at U.S. collegiate football stadiums. You can download the full report for free, to get more stadium profiles as well as school-by-school technology deployment capsules for both the SEC and Pac-12 conferences.

When it comes to college football, the South- eastern Conference – usually just known as “the SEC” – is second to none when it comes to the product on the field.

But what about the product in the stands, namely the wireless technology deployments in SEC stadiums? With just two of 14 conference schools currently with fan-facing Wi-Fi in their main venues, the SEC isn’t pushing any technology envelopes as a whole. And according to one SEC athletic director, there probably won’t be a wholesale march by the conference to the technology forefront – simply because the SEC’s in-stadium fans have other priorities on what needs fixing first.

Scott Stricklin, the AD at SEC member Mississippi State, leads a conference-wide group that is taking a close look at the in- stadium fan experience, a concern for the SEC even as the conference enjoys NFL-like popularity for its teams and games.

“We are proud that we have a pretty special product in our stadiums, and we want to take steps to keep it that way,” said Stricklin in an interview with MSR. A recent conference-wide fan survey, he said, did highlight the fact that when it comes to wireless connectivity, “none of us from a performance standpoint scored very well.”

Wi-Fi not as important as parking, good food

But Stricklin also noted that the same fan survey didn’t place stadium connectivity at the top of the list of things to fix: Instead, it fell well down, trailing issues like parking, clean restrooms, stadium sound and good food. That lack of press- ing concern, combined with Stricklin’s still-common belief that fans should be cheering instead of texting while at the stadium, means that the SEC will probably take a measured approach to Wi-Fi deployments in stadiums, and continue to rely on carrier-funded DAS networks to carry the game-day wireless load.

Scott Stricklin, Mississippi State AD

Scott Stricklin, Mississippi State AD

“I take more of a Mark Cuban approach – I’d rather people in the stands not be watching video [on their phones],” Stricklin said. “It takes away from the shared experience.”

Stricklin also noted that the two schools that have installed Wi-Fi in their stadiums – Auburn and Ole Miss – haven’t had resounding success with their deployments.

“Some [SEC schools] have done [Wi-Fi], and they’re not completely happy with the results,” said Stricklin, saying the lack of success has reinforced the cautious approach to Wi-Fi, conference-wide. “Those are the issues all of us are facing and grappling with,” he added.

SEC fans setting DAS traffic records

Even as they trail on Wi-Fi deployments, that doesn’t mean SEC schools are putting in dial-up phone booths. Indeed, Stricklin noted the huge video boards that have been installed in most conference stadiums, and did say that the recent installations of carrier-funded DAS deploymentshave somewhat eased the no-signal crunch of the near past.

At his own school, Stricklin said his office got a lot of complaints about fans not being able to get a cellular signal before AT&T updated the stadium’s DAS in 2013.

“Last year, we got very few negative comments [about cellular service],” Stricklin said. “AT&T customers were even able to stream video.”

Vaught-Hemingway Stadium, Ole Miss

Vaught-Hemingway Stadium, Ole Miss

AT&T’s aggressive plan to install as many DAS networks as it can has helped bring the SEC to a 100 percent DAS coverage mark, and the fans seem to be enjoying the enhanced cellular connectivity. According to AT&T statistics, fans at SEC schools have regularly led the carrier’s weekly DAS traffic totals for most of the football season, especially at the “big games” between SEC schools like Alabama, Auburn, Ole Miss, Mississippi State and Georgia.

During Alabama’s 25-20 home victory over then-No. 1 Mississippi State, AT&T customers at Bryant-Denny Stadium used 849 gigabytes oftraffic, the second-highest total that weekend for stadiums where AT&T has a DAS. The next two highest data-usage marks that weekend came at games at Georgia (676 GB) and Arkansas (602 GB), highlighting that SEC games typically have huge crowds, and those crowds like to use their cellphones, no matter how good the game on the field is.

Would Wi-Fi help with some of the traffic crunches? Possibly, but only two schools in the conference – Ole Miss and Auburn – currently have fan-facing Wi-Fi in their stadiums. Texas A&M, which is in the middle of a $450 million renovation of Kyle Field, is leaping far ahead of its conference brethren with a fiber-based Wi-Fi and DAS network and IPTV installation that will be among the most advanced anywhere when it is completed this coming summer.

But most of the SEC schools, Stricklin said, will probably stay on the Wi-Fi sidelines, at least until there is some better way to justify the millions of dollars in costs needed to bring Wi-Fi to a facility that might not see much regular use.

“If you only have 6 home games a year, it’s hard to justify,” said Stricklin of the cost of a Wi-Fi stadium network.

Other sports may move before football

Stricklin, the man who wants fans to keep their phones in their pockets at football games, is no stranger to technology-enhanced experiences in stadiums. He claims to “love” the in-seat food delivery options at MSU baseball and basketball games, and notes that the conference athletic directors will have a meeting soon where the game-experience panel experts will walk the ADs through the facets of wireless technology deployments.

“They’re going to lay out what are the challenges, and what are the costs” of wireless deployments, Stricklin said. What Stricklin doesn’t want to see at MSU or at any SEC school is the return of the “no signal” days.

“When fans from other schools come here, we want them to have a good experience,” Stricklin said.

But he’d still prefer that experience is real, not virtual.

“I still just wonder, is anybody really doing this?” he asked. “Are you going to pay what you pay to come to our place, and then watch your phone? What I hope is that we produce such a great experience, you’re not going to want to reach for your phone.”

AT&T’s DAS and Wi-Fi network traffic for Final Four hits multiple Terabyte levels

AT&T StadiumWant to host a big sporting event? You better have a big network. Down in Texas, where everything’s big, AT&T had to go as large as possible to keep fans at the recent Final Four connected. According to AT&T, traffic on its cellular and Wi-Fi networks in and around AT&T Stadium surpassed terabyte levels during college basketball’s biggest weekend, with just over a TB of traffic on cellular and more than 4 TB on the stadium’s Wi-Fi network.

Granted, holding the final games of the college basketball season in a football stadium is sort of a guaranteed way to push the envelope when it comes to fan-phone traffic. With 79,444 fans at the semifinal games on April 5, this year’s event set a new record for most people at a college hoops game. Understandably, cell phone traffic also set records as according to AT&T its total data usage on cellular networks inside the stadium for all three games was 885 GB, up from 667 GB used at last year’s tourney in Atlanta and up from 376 GB used 2 years ago in New Orleans. When you throw in data usage at connected areas like the stadium parking lots, AT&T reported 1,268 GB of traffic, which is a massive amount of selfies.

And remember, this is JUST AT&T traffic. No telling how much T-Mobile, Sprint and Verizon customers generated. Anyone at those companies want to let us know, please do so and we’ll add it all up.

In its press releases before the game AT&T made some noise about how it was doing cool things to prepare for the tournament crowd, like putting “stealth” DAS antennas below the court. Any hoops/hockey stadium IT director knows what’s going on there; when you put a basketball court into a facility that has normally wider fields (football or hockey rinks) you have a huge problem bringing connectivity to the VIP courtside seats. Hence, the solution for the Final Four: antennas below the court. Something that will probably be copied in a lot of arenas around the country.

On the Wi-Fi side, AT&T has one of the bigger and better Wi-Fi networks inside its namesake stadium, and it was put to heavy use as well. According to AT&T its stadium Wi-Fi network carried 4,035 GB of traffic total for the three games. Is your network ready for that kind of pressure? How high will this usage surge go? Have we seen the top yet or are connected fans just getting started?

Wednesday Wi-Fi Whispers: Ruckus Files for IPO, Qualcomm Stadium Gets DAS

It’s about as far from a whisper as you can get, but in the Wi-Fi world the big news of the week was Wi-Fi vendor Ruckus Wireless filing for a $100 million IPO last Friday. As you’ve read here earlier Ruckus is heavily involved with the growing market for big-space Wi-Fi (like stadiums, racetracks and other event areas) and with healthy revenues ($120 million in 2011) the long-rumored move became a reality with the SEC Filing that makes for such good hard-data reading.

The part we like the best in Ruckus’ S-1 is this bit about how big the market is getting for what Ruckus calls its “carrier class” Wi-Fi products:

According to Infonetics, the market for Wi-Fi networking solutions for carriers is expected to grow from $296 million in 2011 to $2.8 billion in 2016, representing a 57% compound annual growth rate. According to Gartner, the market for Wi-Fi networking solutions for enterprises is expected to grow from $3.4 billion in 2011 to $6.9 billion in 2016, representing a 15% compound annual growth rate. Carrier-class Wi-Fi addresses the needs of both of these markets.

Stadium and sports deployments probably fall somewhere in the middle of those markets, since many such deals are being done as partnerships between enterprises (teams) and carriers. But the good news for vendors like Ruckus is, there’s no getting away from the need for Wi-Fi. And the gear needs to be better than earlier technology to handle the needs of big events.

Qualcomm Stadium Gets AT&T DAS; N.Carolina State, U of Kentucky also get upgrades

We’ve always found it more than a bit ironic that Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego, namesake of the chip giant, didn’t have any Wi-Fi to speak of and from what we heard, it had bad cell coverage too. That should change going forward at least a little bit thanks to a new DAS (Distributed Antenna System) deployment AT&T has installed at the home of the Chargers, which will bring AT&T’s new 4G LTE network to football fans in SoCal.

AT&T is also putting some cellular upgrades into college stadiums, including N.C. State’s Carter-Finley Stadium in Raleigh, N.C., which is getting some of the cool new multi-beam antennas. The University of Kentucky’s Commonwealth Stadium in Lexington, Ky., is also getting an upgrade via an AT&T DAS, so SEC fans should be able to get their mobile game on better while cheering on the Wildcats.

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