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Wednesday Wi-Fi Whispers: Olympic Road Race was a Missed Wi-Fi Opportunity

August 1, 2012 by

We’re still scratching our heads here at Mobile Sports Report over the apparent lack of infrastructure planning that led to cellular congestion problems during last weekend’s Olympic men’s cycling road race. Our big, unanswered question: Why didn’t organizers put a temporary Wi-Fi network in place to handle the totally expected wireless traffic?

It can’t be a surprise anymore to anyone that people in general and sports fans in particular are going to be big users of mobile devices at events. Cycling races, especially loop-course races like the Olympics, are probably going to be at the top tier when it comes to mobile data usage since people typically sit in one place along the course to see the riders as they come by every lap — and then spend a lot of time waiting in between.

These days, that waiting is filled with mobile device use and it was a huge miss to not turn the Olympic race into some kind of Wi-Fi endeavor that could have benefitted multiple parties, including the fans. That organizers didn’t do something like install one of the mobile Wi-Fi networks our friends at Xirrus set up during the Tour de France seems to be a huge error, like Michael Phelps forgetting how to finish a butterfly race.

Why didn’t Cisco, which issued several press releases before the Olympics touting its role in helping with the IT infrastructure of the games, push to make the road race a commercial for its sports services? It’s not my marketing budget to spend, but I think Cisco could have done a really cool job by putting in a Wi-Fi network, having digital displays all around the course so that fans could see the action away from where they were sitting, and maybe have an app (like the cool Tour Tracker app) that people could download to stay abreast of the action on their phones and tablets.

Instead — we are left with a lot of finger-pointing, companies saying it wasn’t their problem, blah, blah, blah. The fact that a big crowd was going to be at the race and that it would want to use mobile devices wasn’t a last-minute secret. Big event organizers everywhere should learn from the Olympic failure and think ahead to see if there isn’t a Wi-Fi opportunity that can produce a positive outcome for all involved.

Ruckus Gets London Wi-Fi Gig

More Wi-Fi London news — the folks at Ruckus have won a contract to supply outdoor Wi-Fi antennas in London for operator Telefonika U.K.’s O2, which according to Light Reading have already been appearing on lampposts. Though it’s not a stadium win, it is another vote for Ruckus’ architecture.

Filed Under: Cisco, Olympics, Wi-Fi Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Olympics Wireless Network Gets Overloaded on Day 1: Organizers Ask Fans Not to Tweet

July 29, 2012 by

Well, despite lots of planning and press releases, it turns out that the folks behind the wireless networks at the London Olympics weren’t prepared for the smartphone revolution. According to a Reuters story today, fans effectively shut down TV coverage from the men’s cycling road race by overwhelming the wireless network with their communications, leading the games organizers to ask fans not to tweet so much.

(As Gizmodo says, good luck with that.)

Of course we here at Mobile Sports Report have been covering the whole Wi-Fi at events topic pretty closely, but from here it looks like we’re about to get a new failure data point, for what happens when big-event organizers underestimate the connectivity needs of the crowd. (Stay tuned this week for an in-depth report on the subject.)

According to the Reuters story, the men’s cycling road race Saturday didn’t get key broadcast information during the race because the hundreds of thousands of fans lining the course apparently gummed up the wireless network. Sunday, the games asked folks to back off on Twitter use:

An International Olympic Committee spokesman said the network problem had been caused by the messages sent by the hundreds of thousands of fans who lined the streets to cheer on the British team.

“Of course, if you want to send something, we are not going to say ‘Don’t, you can’t do it’, and we would certainly never prevent people,” he said. “It’s just – if it’s not an urgent, urgent one, please kind of take it easy.”

We are trying to get a response from networking gear vendor Cisco, which made much about its involvement with service provider BT, formerly known as British Telecom, the main service provider in and around London. While Cisco touted its networking chops before the games, like Michael Phelps the network’s performance so far is something short of gold.

Anyone over there in London have any downtime experiences? Let us know in the comments. More on this as we hear from Cisco.

Filed Under: 4G LTE, Cisco, Olympics, Twitter, Wi-Fi Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Xirrus Gets Yellow Jersey for Successful Tour de France Mobile Wi-Fi Network

July 23, 2012 by

That white circular thing at upper right is a Xirrus wireless array, doing its duty in a Tour de France press room. Credit: Xirrus.

Just like Britain’s Bradley Wiggins, Wi-Fi gear vendor Xirrus had a pretty good Tour de France, as its wireless arrays finished off a successful string of supporting the demanding needs of the world’s media during the 21-stage event.

According to a Xirrus press release, the company supplied its gear to French wireless supplier Orange, which delivered Internet access to the race’s start and finish areas, a challenging task that involved quick setup and teardown in the host cities. The Xirrus release said that its network for Orange supported “125 TV broadcasters, 2,300 journalists, 70 radio stations, and 450 newspapers transferring enormous amounts of media-rich files from the Tour’s Start Village, Timing Locations, Sprint Locations, Media Centers, and Finish Lines.”

If you’re not familiar with the demands of sport media, the still cameras alone at a big event like the Tour de France can account for millions of megapixels. Typically the photographers, who spend most of race days on motorcycles, decamp at the finish line press tents and start immediately downloading huge files of photos to their main offices, where the images are posted on web sites or readied for print publications. And they are just a subset of the throng of local broadcasters, national and international print writers and radio commentators who all need big broadband pipes to get their information from race site to website.

That’s where Xirrus and Orange came in, designing a highly mobile network infrastructure that featured Xirrus’ modular access points, which can be configured with more radios as are needed to handle bandwidth demands. That Xirrus was as up to the task as Wiggins and all the other riders who traversed the race’s thousands of kilometers was proven in part by the money quote from the apparently satisfied client, Henri Terreaux, Events Projects Manager at the French Operation Division of Orange:

“Orange is focused on providing the Tour de France, NBC Sports, government dignitaries, and thousands of media professionals during the race with reliable, high-performance wireless connectivity. Xirrus makes it easy to support the thousands of devices, simultaneously transferring large amounts of video and photo files through a robust network that, due to the race, must be redeployed on a daily basis, across 21 cities, in extreme environments. The array-based platform is the most powerful and trusted solution we’ve tested, and very quick to set-up.”

Here are some more details on the Xirrus blog.

Filed Under: Cycling, Sports Photography, Tour de France, Wi-Fi Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Ruckus Powers Wi-Fi — And Mobile Betting — at Famed Saratoga Race Course

July 20, 2012 by

If you follow horse racing you probably know of the famed Saratoga Race Course in upstate New York, the oldest horseracing track in the U.S. Thanks to some gear from Ruckus Wireless that facility now has one of the newest technologies, a Wi-Fi network, which is not only bringing wireless access to fans but also powering mobile betting, where fans at the track can place bets from their seats, with a smartphone app. The network will be ready to rock for today’s opening of Saratoga’s 144th season, according to Ruckus.

We’re scheduled to speak directly with the Ruckus folks soon, so we’ll get more inside info on their overall sports network strategy (which has already seen contract wins at places like the 24 hours of LeMans and the Preakness) but getting into Saratoga is like winning the Kentucky Derby when it comes to scoring a sporting infrastructure contract. The real key to this system may be the ability for fans to use the Fastbet mobile betting app at the track, which will make it easier — and more lucrative for the track — for fans to make an impulse wager without having to stand in the traditional betting line.

And the New York Racing Association, which operates the 149-year-old track, will not just be using the Ruckus network for fan access, but also for other stadium applications, like ticketing. According to a press release, the NYRA also hopes to use the network to support streaming video and digital signage applications in the future.

Here’s the money quote from the NYRA, which hits on the main themes we’ve seen with stadium and event Wi-Fi: Fans are bringing phones to sports events, so adept operators are making moves to keep their patrons connected:

“Saratoga Race Course is one of the premier tracks in the country, and has been a place where racing fans and spectators have enjoyed the sport for nearly a century and a half,” said Tom Thill, CIO for NYRA.

“In very recent years we’ve seen the number of smartphones and mobile devices in use increase dramatically, and we knew we needed to deliver a wireless experience of the same caliber that we’ve always been committed to at the track.”

According to Ruckus, it took 45 of the company’s ZoneFlex dual-band 802.11n wireless access points (both indoor and outdoor units) to fully cover the 350-acre Saratoga site, including the main clubhouse, all restaurants, the outdoor track, fan seating areas, and the racetrack’s large picnic grounds. The network was installed and will be managed by the Albany, N.Y.-based system integrator Deep Blue Communications.

According to the NYRA, this is how the betting system will work:

Patrons will be able to utilize the new Wi-Fi network to link to United Tote’s FastBet Mobile, a wagering application available exclusively on-track and designed for use on smart phones and tablets, including iPhones, iPads and most Android based tablets and phones.

To use the application, NYRA Cash Cards will be available and can be loaded at any voucher window throughout the track. Further deposits, and any withdrawals, can be made at any window. Patrons may then access the FastBet page via the new Wi-Fi network with their device. Patrons enter the card’s account number and pin into FastBet to begin wagering. Once finished, patrons can choose to keep their account balance on their NYRA Cash Card or cash out at any teller window.

One more quote from Thrill? Why not:

“With the scalability and reliability that the Ruckus system delivers, our new mobile on-track wagering system will provide a significant revenue stream for us, while also helping the racecourse maintain its reputation as a top destination for watching state-of-the-art horseracing.”

Bonus: Here is a good Q&A with Ruckus’ CEO, Selina Lo, which covers a lot of ground on Ruckus’ business and notes the company’s impending IPO.

Filed Under: Android, Apple, Apps, Betting, Horse Racing, Wi-Fi Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Wednesday Wi-Fi Whispers: Niners-Brocade News, Coming Soon

July 18, 2012 by

Welcome to “Wednesday Wi-Fi Whispers,” our clever title for a new rumors and news snippets column debuting… right about now. The idea here is to keep this a bit more informal than our regular, solid news coverage, to give a home to those whispers of things we hear that might be happening in the world of stadium Wi-Fi. First up is the yet-to-come formal announcement of the stadium-technology partnership between the San Francisco 49ers and networking gear supplier Brocade.

Brocade and the Niners: It’s all about 802.11ac

When the Niners finally broke ground on their new stadium that is being built in Silicon Valley (Santa Clara, just north of San Jose) back in April, team president Jed York let loose with a tweet that all but announced which Silicon Valley company would get the prized stadium-technology deal. In a bit of a surprise, it wasn’t Cisco Systems, the 900-pound gorilla of networking, whose main corporate campus is seriously “just down the block” from the Niners’ new digs.

If you don’t know Brocade that just means you don’t follow networking technology. Having covered this company in my previous tech-writing lives I was surprised since I thought of Brocade as a core/backbone gear provider, and not a company that had products for things like Wi-Fi access. Silly me. With not a lot of digging I discovered that Brocade had signed a partnership with Motorola several years back and now in fact was heavily into Wi-Fi access points, the key technology in any stadium build.

And though Brocade hasn’t yet commented officially on the Niners deal — a formal press conference is apparently just around the corner — we did speak recently with David Hunt, a senior technical marketing engineer at Brocade, who said that among other innovations you can look to see Wi-Fi gear with the new 802.11ac protocol (which provides much higher throughput than current technology) when the Niners’ stadium is ready. Hunt said that Brocade is already assuming that data loads when the new stadium opens in 2014 will eclipse what is being used now, so look for all kinds of new gear and smart-networking designs to ensure that what will probably be the world’s most wired crowds will stay wirelessly connected.

Cisco, which has an entire building at its nearby HQ that is decked out like a sports bar (as part of its Connected Stadium marketing push) must be smarting a bit to have lost the Niners deal to its smaller neighbor Brocade, whose HQ is also just around the corner from the new site. But in the end Cisco will probably sign up a lot more stadium customers, since Brocade is likely to do the Niners’ arena as kind of a “see what we can do” deal rather than part of a big strategy to go after stadiums. Still, it’s not a bad place to showcase your stuff if you are trying to sell to enterprise technology buyers. Those people spend a lot of time — and money — in Silicon Valley already. Stay tuned to MSR for more when the formal announcement is made. The wait is probably not gonna be long.

Will Time Warner Cable surf from the beaches to the stadiums?

In a cool side-gig thing we did last week we got to hear about how Time Warner Cable has brought Wi-Fi to the beaches in Southern California — according to Rob Cerbone, VP of wireless product management at TWC, the beach Wi-Fi uses solar-powered ACs mounted on lifeguard stands to bring web surfing to the shore.

(By the way, I am shameless about seeing how many times I can milk that web surfing/real surfing line. Twice now, and I’m probably not done yet.)

As we cornered Cerbone after his panel talk we asked the obvious MSR question — if you could bring Wi-Fi to the beach, when can we expect to see TWC bringing Wi-Fi to stadiums? Seems like a natural fit, given the content TWC likes to send over its cables. The official word from Cerbone: No comment. But the body language seemed to say, you might hear something soon. Since TWC plans to have more than 10,000 wireless access points deployed in LA by the end of the year — should be interesting to see where some of them end up. There are a lot of beaches, but more malls… and stadiums.

SEAT Conference — who’s going?

Here’s a free plug for the SEAT 2012 conference, which takes place in Boston the first week of August. With this agenda it looks like a place for MSR and our industry leading stadium Wi-Fi coverage and analysis. We are working on finding a way to get there… if we can, we will see you there.

Is your stadium unwired? Let us know!

Now is the time on Sprockets when we dance. No! Now is the time on Wednesday Whispers when we profile a stadium that has Wi-Fi… but since this is the first time out there are no profiles and we are sad. Is your place “unwired?” Drop us a line and let us know. It could be the start of a grand tour… MSR visits the country’s unwired stadiums! Preferably, with a hot dog and beer in hand. Until next week… stay unwired, my friends.

Filed Under: 4G LTE, Cisco, DAS, NFL, Wi-Fi Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

ESPN’s John Kruk Shilling for Nokia — ‘The Phone for Sports Fans’

July 14, 2012 by

Not sure that just having an ESPN app pre-loaded makes something a phone for sports fans — I mean, c’mon, who can’t download an app — but for your weekend entertainment, here’s ESPN baseball analyst John Kruk shilling for Nokia. OK, I do like the bit at the end. No word on whether the stadium he’s at has Wi-Fi, though. Or whether Kruk was chillin’ at the ESPYs Nokia preparty. Anyway.

Filed Under: Apps, AT&T, Baseball, ESPN, Nokia, Wi-Fi, Windows Phone Tagged With: , , ,
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