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AT&T: Dems top Republicans for convention wireless data use

August 15, 2016 by Paul Kapustka Leave a Comment

There’s an early winner in this year’s election race, at least when it comes to wireless data use: According to AT&T, the Democrats used a total of 5.4 terabytes of data on AT&T networks inside the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia during their convention, compared to 2.8 TB used by the Republicans during their convention at Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland.

Do the traffic totals mean anything for governing our country? Most likely not. But the stats are interesting to look at for stadium technology professionals, especially since an event like a political convention is almost guaranteed to dwarf sporting events given the number of people inside the arenas and the length of action each day.

Remember that these statistics only represent AT&T cellular traffic in each arena, meaning that the actual total of wireless data was probably much higher; that’s because both of the stadiums have in-arena Wi-Fi and internal connectivity for other carriers; but we never got confirmation from either arena whether Wi-Fi was turned on or not, and we did not receive any numbers from other carriers. But — even just the AT&T numbers were impressive to study. Consider:

Average traffic: According to AT&T, traffic during Democratic convention days in late July was 387 percent higher than the average game totals during the Philadelphia Flyers’ playoff series with the Washington Capitals in April. The GOP beat sports too, accoring to AT&T, with an average per-day traffic total 250 percent higher than the total reached during Game 6 of the NBA Finals this year.

Total data use: On July 28, the Wells Fargo Center saw 1.5 TB of traffic on the AT&T cellular network — a pretty big total for a building that isn’t a huge football stadium.

Surrounding area data use: Chew on this stat for a bit from AT&T’s press release: “Across the major venues supporting the DNC – including the arena, Philadelphia Convention Center, along the Ben Franklin Parkway and surrounding areas – we saw approximately 64 TB cross our mobile network during the DNC. During the Pope’s visit last September, we saw 12.6 TB cross our network in Philly.”

Again, the Dems crushed the Republicans on this front — according to AT&T, GOP visitors used 9.4 TB of wireless data at surrounding venues during the event, still an interesting mark but far off the Dems’ totals. What this has us wondering here at stadium-stats central is if we should now separate and include related-area numbers… weigh in with your thoughts, please!

Filed Under: 4G LTE, AT&T, Basketball, Comcast, DAS, NBA, NHL, Stanley Cup Tagged With: AT&T, Cellular traffic, Cleveland, DAS, Democratic National Convention, Mobile Sports Report, Paul Kapustka, Philadelphia, Quicken Loans Arena, Republican National Convention, Wells Fargo Center

Wi-Fi for concourses, suites makes its debut at Daytona 500

February 20, 2016 by Paul Kapustka Leave a Comment

The famed banked track at Daytona International Speedway. Photo: Daytona International Speedway

Ladies and gentlemen, start your engines! Then connect to Wi-Fi!

Fans at Sunday’s Daytona 500 NASCAR season opener will be able to connect to free Wi-Fi services in the new, wide concourses, suites, and midway area of the newly refurbished Daytona International Speedway, thanks to a new deployment led by Arris International, using Wi-Fi gear from Ruckus Wireless, management software from Aptilo and a new wiring infrastructure from CommScope.

According to Pete Wagener, senior vice president of sales operations at Arris, the already operational “phase 1” of the Wi-Fi network serves the new concourses, the VIP suites and the front-stretch “midway” area behind the seating structure. As part of the $400 million refurbishing of the historical racetrack, the first permanent deployment of Wi-Fi at Daytona was targeted at areas where the 101,500 fans who fill Daytona can congregate, Wagener said. A “phase 2” deployment will bring Wi-Fi to campgrounds and parking areas next year, but a “phase 3” plan to bring Wi-Fi directly to seating areas is still not yet a confirmed deal, Wagener said.

New concourse area at the track. Photo: DIS

Under the “Daytona Rising” refurbishing of the speedway, the addition of wide concourse areas behind the main seating area and a newly designed “midway” area on the ground level gives fans more areas to congregate, and with video monitors and Wi-Fi, they can stay connected to the action on the track. A new mobile app is also ready for its Daytona 500 debut, with features like live wayfinding inside the stadium and a parking locator, no small thing in the huge lots that are filled on race days.

Wagener said the Wi-Fi network has already been tested a couple times, at the Rolex 24 hours at Daytona on Jan. 30 and Jan. 31, and at the Daytona qualifying events earlier in the month. He added that the network management system has already allowed the IT team to make adjustments, adding more Wi-Fi access points (there are now 250 in the current phase) to get ready for the expected traffic on race day.

Wi-Fi antenna on light pole at Daytona. Photo: Arris

Planning for future needs now

Putting fan-facing networks into huge race tracks like Daytona has always been something owners were reluctant to do, since it was hard to justify the costs of covering hundreds of thousands of seats that only might be filled with fans a few days a year. Daytona itself had seen some mobile Wi-Fi deployments, mainly to cover areas like campgrounds or parking, but had never brought Wi-Fi into the actual stadium itself.

But now with more events scheduled for the Daytona facility — and a plan to use the Daytona network operations center as the central control unit for Wi-Fi deployments at other International Speedway Corporation tracks — Wagener said that with the highly granular analytics its system will produce, NASCAR will be able to more easily justify the cost of the network through targeted marketing and maybe even charging for higher tiers of service in the future, especially at the campgrounds and parking areas, where fans may want to consume more bandwidth during their overnight stays.

Wagener also said that Arris, which deployed Wi-Fi networks at the Charlotte Arena and at World Cup soccer sites in Brazil, is looking toward more stadium deployments in the future, calling it “the next frontier for our industry.” Best known perhaps for its work providing gear and infrastructure for Comcast’s consumer network, Wagener said Arris brings “carrier class expertise” that is necessary for deployments on the scale of a Daytona Speedway.

In a separate announcement, CommScope said that it was also a partner in the communications infrastructure for “Daytona Rising,” deploying miles of copper cabling and fiber optic lines to support the new Wi-Fi system as well as TV displays and other stadium infrastructure needs.

Cabling run inside speedway. Photo: CommScope

Filed Under: 4G LTE, Apps, Comcast, Daytona 500, NASCAR, Wi-Fi Tagged With: Arris, CommScope, Daytona 500, Daytona International Speedway, Mobile Sports Report, NASCAR, Paul Kapustka, Ruckus Wireless, Stadium Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi

Niners: All (tech) systems go at Levi’s Stadium for Super Bowl 50

January 31, 2016 by Paul Kapustka Leave a Comment

Levi’s Stadium, ready for the Super Bowl. All stadium photos: Levi’s Stadium (click on any photo for a larger image)

As far as the technology at Levi’s Stadium is concerned, it’s all systems go for Sunday’s Super Bowl 50, according to San Francisco 49ers chief operating officer Al Guido.

In a phone interview with Mobile Sports Report, Guido said the 2-year-old stadium’s vaunted technology underpinnings — especially the wireless connectivity for fans — is ready to go for the NFL’s biggest yearly event, after a second season spent mainly fine-tuning the different components.

“We couldn’t feel more confident, hosting the game,” said Guido, speaking specifically about the technology infrastructure at Levi’s Stadium. As he stated before the regular season began, the Niners didn’t do anything radical to the stadium’s Wi-Fi network, which uses gear from Aruba, an HP Enterprise company, to bring the main wireless bandwidth to fans.

And while the stadium’s distributed antenna system (DAS) got a complete replacement over the summer, the new capabilities including under-seat DAS antennas for Verizon Wireless should only lead to better reception than the year before. According to Guido, representatives from Aruba as well as from “all the carriers” will be on hand Super Sunday just in case anything needs close attention.

“Everybody’s going to be at a high tech [support] level” on game day, Guido said.

Drink delivery order page on Super Bowl stadium app, including the $13 Bud Light.

No food, but in-seat beverage delivery as part of stadium app

The Super Bowl 50 stadium app, designed for the NFL by the Niners’ in-house app development company VenueNext, will have some but not all of the features Niners fans have available during the regular season. The most obvious omission is the lack of food delivery to all seats, something that makes Levi’s Stadium stand apart from any other large public sporting venue. Instead, the stadium app will only allow fans to order beverages for in-seat delivery, with the option to order food, beverage and merchandise that can be claimed at “express pickup” concession windows.

According to Guido, the decision to only have beverage deliveries at Super Bowl 50 was one reached jointly by the NFL, the Niners and VenueNext, and the catering company for the stadium, Centerplate. Guido said that the potential “amount of education” for all the fans new to the stadium and new to the app led the league, the Niners and the caterers toward a path of greater simplicity, namely just having beverages available for in-seat delivery.

“It was a risk-reward decision about the amount of fan education needed,” Guido said. “There’s so much going on at a Super Bowl and so many people new to the stadium that it didn’t seem worth it to us to risk someone not getting an order delivered because of their error, or our error.” Guido added that with all the extra breaks in action for a Super Bowl, and additional concessions stands, “there’s enough time to get around” to get food.

View of the temporary media towers on the Dignity Health concourse

Michelle McKenna-Doyle, senior vice president and chief information officer for the NFL, told Sports Business Journal that the league was also concerned about game-day delivery traffic patterns being disrupted by the new media towers that have been built for the game in the corner plaza areas of the stadium. “We were worried about having to keep up with demand … and we need to keep the aisles clear, which is important to the security team,” McKenna-Doyle said in a story by SBJ’s Don Muret.

The app will, however, include its normal live wayfinding capabilities, which should prove useful to new visitors to Levi’s Stadium since they can watch themselves walk through a map of the facility as a familiar moving blue dot. Like it does for Niners games, the app will also have instant replays from multiple camera angles available, as well as Super Bowl extras like a “celebrity cam” and the ability to watch Super Bowl commercials right after they are broadcast on TV.

Guido said the Levi’s Stadium app performed well all season, with an average of about “2,000 to 2,500” in-seat delivery orders per game. What was especially pleasing to the team was the number of fans who used the app’s ability to support digital ticketing, a feature that makes life somewhat simpler for fans but exponentially better for the team, which can gain valuable marketing insight from digital ticket-use statistics. According to Guido almost 35 percent of fans used digital ticketing during the past season.

Media towers save seats for fans

Niners fans watching Sunday’s game on TV might be surprised by the media towers, which Guido said were built in the Intel and Dignity Health concourse areas, which during regular-season games are simply open spaces. Guido said the decision to build temporary facilities for media means that the regular stadium seats will be saved for fans. At many other pro championship or playoff events, the overflow media are often housed in regular seating areas.

“The NFL made a great decision there” to put the media in the pavilions, Guido said.

If there is one thing that can’t really be controlled, it’s the traffic and transportation issues of bringing fans to the game. On Sunday fans coming to the game will confront Levi’s Stadium’s unique location in the middle of many Silicon Valley corporate headquarters buildings, which presents challenges that stadiums like AT&T Stadium in Dallas or the University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale, Ariz. — which are surrounded by acres of stadium-controlled parking lots — simply don’t have. To help with Super Bowl traffic the planners are using multiple methods, including using Google employee buses as shuttles as well as signing Uber as a sponsor with its own dedicated pickup and dropoff lot. There is also light rail service which stops right outside the stadium, which intially in the past experienced lengthy delays especially after games, but has improved over time.

“Traffic and transportation is our largest concern,” Guido said.

Bring on the players and fans!

Filed Under: 4G LTE, Apps, AT&T, CBS Sports, Comcast, DAS, Denver Broncos, Denver Broncos, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Levi's Stadium, NFL, Super Bowl, VenueNext, Verizon Wireless, Wi-Fi, Xfinity Tagged With: 4G LTE, Apps, Aruba, AT&T, Carolina Panthers, CBS Sports, DAS, DAS Group Professionals, Denver Broncos, Levi's Stadium, Mobile Sports Report, NFL, Paul Kapustka, San Francisco 49ers, Stadium Wi-Fi, Super Bowl, Super Bowl 50, Verizon Wireless, Wi-Fi

Your Levi’s Stadium technology primer: Everything you need to know about wireless technology at the site of Super Bowl 50!

January 24, 2016 by Paul Kapustka 2 Comments

Scoreboard promo for the Levi’s Wi-Fi network, from 2014 season. All photos: Paul Kapustka, MSR (click on any photo for a larger image)

With Super Bowl 50 two weeks away there is going to be increased interest about whether or not Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif., host site of the event, is “the most technologically advanced” athletic venue. Here at Mobile Sports Report, we have spent the better part of the last two years researching and reporting on Levi’s Stadium and all its technical components, attending multiple events and compiling all the known statistics we can find, to present as complete and as honest an assessment as possible, from a completely objective perspective, about the technology found at Levi’s Stadium.

So what’s our verdict? As we see it, there are three main features that set Levi’s Stadium aside from most others, and qualify it for consideration as one of the most technologically advanced large public venues: The stadium’s Wi-Fi network, its distributed antenna system, or DAS, and the integrated Levi’s Stadium app, which takes advantage of a large network of beacons to provide wayfinding and other location-based features. Though some of the components, like the Wi-Fi network, may not be the fastest or largest around, it’s our opinion that the sum of the parts puts Levi’s Stadium at or near the top of any well-connected stadium list; but the 2-year-old venue’s real test won’t come until Super Sunday, when we’ll all see if the networks, apps and personnel performance can live up to the stress of one of sport’s biggest events.

For anyone who wants to know the exhaustive details behind the technology, we’ve included in this story links to all of our Levi’s Stadium stories we think are pertinent, to help other writers or interested sports-tech types get a grip on what’s really going to be technologically available to the 72,000 or so fans who show up on Feb. 7 to watch the NFL’s 50th annual big game.

For starters, here is the first part of a feature we did at the start of the season about how Levi’s Stadium was getting ready for Super Bowl 50. Though we expect some more news next week about late additions, this article pretty much sums up the first-year performance and the tweaks the San Francisco 49ers made to their home-stadium’s wireless infrastructure. And here is the second part of the feature, which focuses more on the stadium’s excellent app, which we’ll talk more about later.

Fans take pictures at Levi’s Stadium, opening day 2014 season.

Wi-Fi: It’s good, but is it the best?

The Wi-Fi in the stadium is pretty good, among the best out there anywhere, but probably not the biggest or fastest network in all the land. Though the Aruba-gear network was innovative for its heavy use of under-seat Wi-Fi APs and the 1,200 APs it had for its first year, other stadiums are meeting or beating those numbers, and under-seat deployments are now becoming quite trendy for venues that want fast, wide connectivity. With slightly more than 1,200 APs now, the Levi’s Stadium Wi-Fi network has seen some big-traffic days for Wi-Fi, including the stadium’s NFL regular-season opener and a WrestleMania event last year.

Among stadiums we’ve seen, AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, has more Wi-Fi APs and is a bigger place (by about 30,000 in capacity for football) so it had more overall Wi-Fi traffic than Levi’s the past couple years. And Kyle Field’s new network down at Texas A&M is the fastest we’ve seen anywhere, and already has had a bigger Wi-Fi traffic day than Levi’s Stadium. And we haven’t yet visited Miami’s Sun Life Stadium but they get a lot of wireless traffic there too. So while Levi’s Stadium may be among the best, we’re not quite sure it is at the top of the list, at least when it comes to sheer Wi-Fi connectivity.

We might change our tune if the Super Bowl 50 crowd can top last year’s Super Bowl Wi-Fi traffic total of 6.23 terabytes, recorded at the University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale, Ariz. But so far the biggest total recorded at Levi’s Stadium was 4.5 TB seen at the WrestleMania 31 event last March. From our unofficial observations, the “top 5” list of most single-day Wi-Fi events we know of are:

1) 6.23 TB — Super Bowl XLIX, University of Phoenix Stadium, Glendale, Ariz., Feb. 1, 2015
2) 5.7 TB — Alabama vs. Texas A&M, Kyle Field, College Station, Texas, Oct. 17, 2015
3) 4.93 TB — College Football Playoff championship game, AT&T Stadium, Arlington, Texas, Jan. 12, 2015
4) 4.9 TB — College Football Playoff championship game, University of Phoenix Stadium, Glendale, Ariz., Jan. 11, 2016
5) 4.5 TB — WrestleMania 31, Levi’s Stadium, Santa Clara, Calif., March 31, 2015

For what it’s worth, Super Bowl XLVIII in MetLife Stadium used only 3.2 TB of Wi-Fi, so it will be interesting to see what happens with the growth curve at SB50. In addition to total data “tonnage” there is also an interesting observation about how much data is used per fan, on average. When we get the stats back from Super Bowl Sunday it will be interesting to see if the smaller crowd at Levi’s Stadium will have used more data per connected person, a good reflection of both the carrying capacity of the network and the ease of connecting and staying connected to the Wi-Fi.

Replacing the entire DAS for better cellular connectivity

What is often confusing to non-tech types who try to write about stadium wireless is realizing that there are often two separate networks, Wi-Fi and cellular, operating in the same venue. While many fans actively seek out Wi-Fi, many game-day attendees either don’t bother or don’t know how to connect to Wi-Fi, and so just use their phones like they do anywhere else. To make sure they still have a strong signal, wireless carriers and venues often team up to deploy a distributed antenna system, or DAS, which is basically a bunch of small antennas located inside the venue that act just like a big cell tower, connecting phones to the nearest antenna.

Close-up of new DAS antennas (from mid-July, before the wires were connected)

At Levi’s Stadium, integrator DAS Group Professionals (DGP) built a “neutral host” DAS for the stadium, which means the team owns the infrastructure and rents out space to carriers so they can connect to customers inside the building. One of the more interesting twists this past offseason was that DGP ripped out and replaced the entire DAS network it built the year before, at the behest of its customers, the major cellular providers. Why? According to DGP, the cell providers — who paid for the upgrade — are expecting as much as 2.5 times more cellular data at this year’s Super Bowl compared to last year, huge numbers that they were afraid might overwhelm the system installed in 2014.

During a stadium tour this summer, MSR saw that the main Levi’s Stadium head end (where the telecom gear that connects the stadium to the outside networks lives) was being doubled in size, so by any stretch cell connectivity should be good if not great during the big game. DGP was also supposed to be increasing cell coverage outside the stadium in the parking lots, but so far we haven’t heard any reports if reception was better this year than last.

At big events like the Super Bowl, the big wireless carriers will spend like crazy to make sure there are no reports of “phones not working,” so the DAS upgrades have become somewhat par for the course. AT&T said that it spent $25 million on wireless infrastructure improvements in the greater Bay area, including expanding its DAS operations inside Levi’s Stadium to allow them to handle 150 percent more traffic. You can expect that Verizon was spending some similar dollars, so rest assured, if you are there your phone will more likely than not find a signal.

What will the app let you do?

The biggest question remaining about the technological underpinnings of Super Bowl 50 — at least as of Sunday night — is whether or not all the features from the regular-season Levi’s Stadium app will make it into the mix for the Super Bowl, especially the one that really sets Levi’s Stadium apart, the ability to order food to be delivered to any seat in the stadium.

Though we’ve been given a “head nod” that the service will be available for Super Sunday, we haven’t yet received any official notice of what’s going to be in the game-day app either from app provider VenueNext or the NFL. This season Niners fans at home games could not only order food and drinks for themselves, they could order and pay for food to be delivered to friends in the stadium, something we noted in our season preview of changes to the groundbreaking Levi’s Stadium app.

App showing ability to buy pricey parking ticket for your RV

If there is some doubt whether the league and the stadium might not make food-delivery available for the Super Bowl, it might have to do with the fact that at one of last year’s “big events” at Levi’s Stadium, the NHL’s Stadium Series outdoor hockey game, the food-delivery service melted down in the face of a massive amount of orders and a too-low level of human staffing. But our guess is that eventually (maybe this week?) we will hear that the Super Bowl app will embrace all the features of the regular Levi’s Stadium game-day app, including in-seat delivery.

What many fans at the game may find even more useful is the app’s ability to provide wayfinding capabilities through a mapping feature that uses the 2,000+ Bluetooth beacons installed throughout the venue to provide live wayfinding, just like how Google Maps shows your car as a blue dot driving down the highway. With many attendees most likely visiting the stadium for the first time, having the ability to find your way around via your device may be the most welcome reason to download the app. Fans should also be able to watch in-stadium replays seconds after plays happen, and may also be able to watch Super Bowl broadcast commercials via their mobile device. Stay tuned for more “official” announcements of app capabilities as we hear them.

In case you haven’t heard enough, here are a few more links from our in-person visits to Levi’s Stadium for Niners home games during the 2014 season.

Niners’ home opener tops Super Bowl for Wi-Fi data traffic with 3.3 Terabytes (Sept. 16, 2014)

Levi’s Stadium ‘NiNerds’ get high-visibility wardrobe upgrade (Nov. 23, 2014)

Stadium Tech Report: Network finishes season strong at Niners’ Levi’s Stadium (Jan. 12, 2015)

Filed Under: 4G LTE, Apps, AT&T, Comcast, DAS, Denver Broncos, Levi's Stadium, MSR Guides, NFL, Sprint, Super Bowl, T-Mobile, VenueNext, Verizon Wireless, Wi-Fi Tagged With: 4G LTE, Apps, AT&T, Carolina Panthers, DAS, Denver Broncos, Levi's Stadium, Mobile Sports Report, NFL, Paul Kapustka, Stadium Wi-Fi, Super Bowl, Super Bowl 50, Super Bowl app, VenueNext, Verizon Wireless, Wi-Fi

Ruckus, DAS Group Professionals, CommScope and Brocade all part of Sacramento Kings’ new tech-forward stadium

January 6, 2016 by Paul Kapustka Leave a Comment

Golden 1 Center in Sacramento taking shape earlier this summer. All photos: Paul Kapustka, MSR (click on any photo for a larger image)

Thursday morning at CES here in Las Vegas Sacramento Kings owner Vivek Ranadive is scheduled to speak and will no doubt tell the CES attendees about the Kings’ new stadium, the Golden 1 Center, and about how tech-loaded it is by design. But Wednesday night details emerged about the vendors helping the Kings with their extensive wireless deployment, and the list includes Ruckus Wireless, DAS Group Professionals, Brocade and CommScope, among others.

As previously reported by Mobile Sports Report, Ruckus gear will be used in the Wi-Fi deployment not just at the 17,500-seat Golden 1 Center, but also in the surrounding area, which is supposed to include a new public plaza and other developments, including hotel, office, housing and retail space. In the press announcement of all the tech underpinnings the Kings do not state exactly how many Wi-Fi APs will be in the stadium proper but instead say that there will be “more than 1,000” APs in both the stadium and surrounding plaza and developments. UPDATE, 1/10/16: The Kings have responded to clarify, saying there isn’t yet an exact AP count but density is expected to be in the area of one AP per 15 seats, which would put the final total well over 1,000 APs and easily be the most APs for a Wi-Fi deployment in any basketball/hockey arena we know of, and perhaps the most dense of any sporting venue (for now).

Since we’re nit-picking we’ll also question the Kings’ claim that Golden 1 Center will be “the first arena in the world to implement wide-band, multimode fiber technology” on the backbone, a curious claim since the fiber-based network at Texas A&M’s Kyle Field is already operational (and working quite well). UPDATE, 1/10/16: The Kings have responded and say that their implementation differs from Texas A&M’s passive optical network; we will provide further details and comparisons in the near future.

The DGP team at Levi’s Stadium for a summer interview included, L to R, Derek Cotton, director of engineering; Steve Dutto, president; and Vince Gamick, VP and COO. These guys are probably smiling again now that DGP will be part of the Golden 1 Center deployment.

Frothy claims aside, we are very interested in hearing more about the venue’s tech underpinnings, especially the combined DAS/small cell deployment being installed by DAS Group Professionals, the builders of the DAS network at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif. According to the Kings’ release wireless powerhouse CommScope will be part of the infrastructure as well (along with bandwidth provider Comcast, a deal that was announced last month), and network backbone gear provider Brocade will also be involved, making Golden 1 Center a mini-me kind of version of Levi’s Stadium, where Comcast, Brocade and DGP are all also involved. (This is also not so surprising since we have heard rumors that the Kings hired some IT folks who previously worked on the Levi’s Stadium deployment.)

If there is an outlier to the deal it’s the Wi-Fi presence of Ruckus, which has had a tough year when it comes to potential stadium deployments. First Ruckus had a deal for Wi-Fi at the new San Jose Earthquakes soccer stadium but lost that when Avaya booted Ruckus off the pitch by purchasing naming rights to now-Avaya Stadium for $20 million. More recently, Ruckus was part of an initial winning bid with integrator 5 Bars for the Wi-Fi deployment at Houston’s NRG Stadium, but was replaced at the last minute by Extreme Networks to unspecified and unconfirmed pressure, most likely by the NFL. On the plus side, Ruckus gear was used for the Wi-Fi deployment at Angels Stadium in Anaheim, as well as at Indian Wells Tennis Garden, site of the big spring pro tennis tourney.

We will try to fill in more blanks and details during Ranadive’s appearance Thursday (like who will be designing the team app, which we are guessing might be VenueNext), but the real proof of the Golden 1 pudding won’t come until October, since you never can tell how a stadium network will work until it’s turned on for a full house of device-holding fans. That’s why we don’t put much stock in theoretical claims, like the Kings’ ridiculous promise that the network can handle “over 500,000 Snapchat posts per second” — that’s some fast fingers for a full house of 17,500, no? When it comes to feeds and speeds we are firmly in the show-me house, so we hope the Kings and Golden 1 Center will be as open with their real-world statistics come next fall as they are with press-release superlatives now.

Filed Under: 4G LTE, Basketball, Comcast, DAS, Levi's Stadium, NBA, VenueNext, Wi-Fi, Xfinity Tagged With: 4G LTE, Brocade, CommScope, DAS, DAS Group Professionals, Golden 1 Center, Levi's Stadium, Mobile Sports Report, NBA, Paul Kapustka, Ruckus Wireless, Sacramento Kings, Stadium Wi-Fi, Vivek Ranadive, Wi-Fi

Comcast to provide back-end bandwidth for Kings’ Golden 1 Center

December 17, 2015 by Paul Kapustka Leave a Comment

Golden 1 Center in Sacramento takes shape (screenshot from Sacramento Kings video)

The Sacramento Kings have signed Comcast to a deal to provide the back-end Internet bandwidth for the Golden 1 Center, the new basketball arena that is scheduled to open in time for the 2016-17 season.

In a deal that sounds similar to the one Comcast signed with the San Francisco 49ers to provide service to Levi’s Stadium, Comcast Business will provide the Sacramento stadium with bandwidth to drive the planned fan-facing Wi-Fi network, among other services. While the press release claims that Comcast will use two 100 gigabit Ethernet circuits to supply the stadium, we suggest taking the claim that the venue’s Internet connection “will be over 17,000 times faster than the average home Internet connection” with a grain of salt and the warning that your mileage may vary.

The press release today did not confirm our earlier report that Ruckus Wireless will be the vendor supplying the Wi-Fi gear for the stadium, nor did it offer any specifics on what kind of bandwidth fans might actually get during a sellout game; but with Comcast on the back end whatever network is built should have no problem getting enough connectivity, especially with two 100-gig pipes.

From the looks of this cool video the stadium is taking shape nicely… roof on and everything!

Filed Under: Comcast, Levi's Stadium, NBA, Wi-Fi Tagged With: Comcast, Golden 1 Center, Mobile Sports Report, NBA, Paul Kapustka, Sacramento Kings, Stadium Wi-Fi, Vivek Ranadive, Wi-Fi