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NFL Stadium Tech Reviews — NFC North

November 23, 2015 by Leave a Comment

Editor’s note: The following team-by-team capsule reports of NFL stadium technology deployments are an excerpt from our most recent Stadium Tech Report, THE PRO FOOTBALL ISSUE. To get all the capsules in one place as well as our featured reports, interviews and analysis, download your free copy of the full report today.

NFC NORTH

Reporting by Paul Kapustka

Lambeau Field, home of the Green Bay Packers, now has Wi-Fi for fans. All photos: Green Bay Packers

Lambeau Field, home of the Green Bay Packers, now has Wi-Fi for fans. All photos: Green Bay Packers

Green Bay Packers
Lambeau Field
Seating Capacity: 80,735
Wi-Fi – Yes
DAS – Yes

Wi-Fi has finally come to the NFL’s frozen tundra, courtesy of a deployment from Extreme Networks and backed also by Verizon Wireless. Like in Seattle, fans in Green Bay will be able to access two separate Wi-Fi networks – one for Verizon customers, the other for all other cellular customers. Verizon is also the host of the neutral DAS, which counts AT&T as a customer. (See cover story profile.)

Chicago Bears
Soldier Field
Seating Capacity: 61,500
Wi-Fi – Yes
DAS – Yes

The home of Da Bears remains the only NFL stadium we know of that still charges for Wi-Fi use – the network, provided by Boingo Wireless, costs fans $1.99 per day. AT&T and Boingo also recently updated the already-robust DAS around the stadium, adding coverage for tailgating areas as well.

Detroit Lions
Ford Field
Seating Capacity: 65,000
Wi-Fi – Yes/limited (Verizon customers only)
DAS – Yes

Verizon customers at Ford Field will have access to Wi-Fi, but customers from other carriers are out of luck.

Minnesota Vikings
TCF Bank Stadium
Seating Capacity: 52,000
Wi-Fi – Limited / in select areas only
DAS – Yes

As Vikings fans wait for the opening of the new U.S. Bank Stadium – which is supposed to have the latest in stadium Wi-Fi – they will spend one more year without Wi-Fi at TCF Bank Stadium. UPDATE: According to AT&T, the DAS installed in 2014 was upgraded this season, from 10 to 17 sectors. Several Vikings home games this season have seen 200+ gigabytes of data on the AT&T network on the DAS, according to AT&T.

Filed Under: 4G LTE, AT&T, DAS, Detroit Lions, NFL, Verizon Wireless, Wi-Fi Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Stadium Tech Report — NFL stadium technology reports — NFC North

November 10, 2014 by Leave a Comment

Editor’s note: The following team-by-team capsule reports of NFL stadium technology deployments are an excerpt from our most recent Stadium Tech Report, THE FOOTBALL ISSUE. To get all the capsules in one place as well as our featured reports, interviews and analysis, download your free copy of the full report today.

NFC NORTH

Reporting by Chris Gallo

Chicago Bears
Soldier Field
Seating Capacity: 61,500
Wi-Fi – Yes, 175 access points
DAS – Yes, 220 access points
Beaconing – No

Soldier FieldAn unexpected experiment tested Soldier Field’s connectivity in 2013. Severe weather delayed the Ravens and Bears Nov. 17 tilt for two hours, meaning fans were reaching for their phones all at once to stay connected. The wireless activity doubled in this time period, but Solider Field handled it with ease. Boingo and AT&T boosted the stadium’s DAS with more than 220 new antennas. Combine that with 175 Wi-Fi access points, and one of the NFL’s oldest stadiums is well-connected. However, it will cost fans to be connected – $1.99 per day or $7.95 for the monthly Boingo fee.

Detroit Lions
Ford Field
Seating Capacity: 65,000
Wi-Fi-Yes
DAS-Yes
Beaconing – No

The Detroit Lions have one of the more exciting offenses in the NFL. And now fans will be able to share that excitement as Verizon brings Wi-Fi to Ford Field in 2014. It’s a major upgrade for a stadium that enters in 12th season. Will the improvement spill over onto the field, and have the Lions host their first playoff game since 1994?

Green Bay Packers
Lambeau Field
Seating Capacity: 80,735
Wi-Fi – No
DAS-Yes
Beaconing – No

The oldest home stadium in the NFL is still a memorable place to catch a game. But after the Packers needed corporate sponsors to sell out last year’s home playoff game against the San Francisco 49ers, the organization is planning more upgrades. The Packers are in the middle of another multi-million dollar renovation that improves scoreboards, increases capacity, and has plans to add Wi-Fi to the stadium in the near future.

Minnesota Vikings
TCF Bank Stadium
Seating Capacity: 52,000
Wi-Fi – Limited / in select areas only
DAS-Yes
Beaconing – No

The Vikings are headed for the outdoors in 2014 and 2015. While the organization’s new digs are being built, the team will play at TCF Bank Stadium – home of the Minnesota Golden Gophers. While not available throughout the stadium, there is some Wi-Fi present (in suites and club areas), as well as a new DAS upgrade from AT&T.

Filed Under: 4G LTE, AT&T, DAS, Detroit Lions, NFL, Verizon Wireless, Wi-Fi Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Niners’ home opener tops Super Bowl for Wi-Fi data traffic with 3.3 Terabytes

September 16, 2014 by 13 Comments

Fans take pictures of opening kickoff from southwest concourse. Credit, all photos: Paul Kapustka, MSR

Fans take pictures of opening kickoff from southwest concourse. Credit, all photos: Paul Kapustka, MSR

The first regular-season home game for the San Francisco 49ers in their new home, Levi’s Stadium, produced more Wi-Fi traffic and far more actual fan-to-network connections than the most-recent Super Bowl, according to statistics from the Niners’ tech team.

Dan Williams, vice president of technology for the 49ers, said the Levi’s Stadium Wi-Fi network carried 3.3 Terabytes of data during Sunday night’s game between the Niners and the Chicago Bears, topping the 3.2 TB mark reported from Super Bowl XLVIII in February. According to Williams, out of the 70,799 that filled Levi’s Stadium Sunday, more than 30,000 fans connected to the Wi-Fi network at some point, with peak usage of 19,000 fans all connecting at one time occurring just before the 5:30 p.m. local time kickoff. According to the Super Bowl stats, the peak number of fans on Wi-Fi at that game at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey was 13,500.

“We’re pretty excited by Sunday,” said Williams, who said that the Wi-Fi network stood up well even under peak data transfer rates of 3.1 Gbps right before kickoff, and another 2.6 Gbps peak around 7:30 p.m. Around the peaks, network traffic stayed “well over 1 gig per second for three and a half hours,” Williams said.

North scoreboard screen at Levi's Stadium.

North scoreboard screen at Levi’s Stadium.

During the Niners’ first preseason game against the Denver Broncos, the Levi’s Stadium Wi-Fi network carried 2.13 TB of data, and during the Aug. 24 preseason game against San Diego there was another 1.96 TB of Wi-Fi data. The figures do not include any reporting from the stadium’s DAS network, which carries cellular traffic from AT&T, Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile customer. If preseason games are any indication, Williams expects to see numbers in the terabyte range for DAS traffic as well.

The Wi-Fi numbers from Sunday showed that fans quickly figured out a name change in the network name (or SSID). During preseason games, the Wi-Fi network was identified as “Levi’s Stadium” in a device list of available networks; on Sunday the free stadium network used the name “xfinitywifi,” reflecting the brand of Wi-Fi sponsor Comcast. Some fans might have been confused since the “xfinitywifi” SSID is the same one used by Comcast for its public Wi-Fi networks.

“Some folks may have been scratching their heads,” said Williams. “We changed the name last Monday before the opener.”

Replay app gets 7,800 views

As previously reported by MSR, the instant replay feature of the Levi’s Stadium app had its debut Sunday, and according to Williams fans watched 7,800 replays via the app. The top replay view was of the early touchdown pass from Niners QB Colin Kaepernick to Michael Crabtree, which Williams said was viewed more than 1,000 times.

Fans on southwest concourse take photos of live action.

Fans on southwest concourse take photos of live action.

As MSR reported, the replay feature was somewhat limited in functionality, not working at all until late in the first half and then only offering the last two plays plus some scoring highlights for viewing. Previously, team executives had said the replay feature would offer multiple camera angles and multiple replay reviews all at the same time. According to Williams, more features will be added to the replay function in the near future.

“It’s not the finished product, by any means,” Williams said. “You’ll see some more polish on it.”

The most-used feature in the stadium app, Williams said, continues to be the food and beverage features, which allow fans to either purchase concessions for express line pickup, or to have their orders delivered to their seats. Williams said the Niners delivered 2,100 food orders to fans Sunday, the most for the Niners so far.

Perhaps the best news for Williams was the lack of complaints about the wireless network, which the team had asked fans to tweet about if they were experiencing problems. Though some fans with older devices that only work on the 2.4 GHz wireless bands might not see the same speeds as those with newer devices (which use the more roomy 5 GHz bands), Williams said his team only got a couple complaints about network issues, and one of those was solved before they could respond.

“Overall it just was a really good [wireless] experience,” said Williams, who always ends by noting that networks are never completely finished products. But with its Super Bowl-beating performance Sunday, the Levi’s Stadium network appears in midseason form.

“I think we’re close,” Williams said.

View from the north porch

View from the north porch

Filed Under: 4G LTE, AT&T, DAS, Denver Broncos, NFL, Seattle Seahwaks, Sprint, Super Bowl, T-Mobile, Verizon Wireless, Wi-Fi Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Instant replay feature debuts as network rocks at Niners’ home opener at Levi’s Stadium

September 15, 2014 by 3 Comments

Instant replay feature on Levi's Stadium app. Credit all photos: Paul Kapustka, MSR

Instant replay feature on Levi’s Stadium app. Credit all photos: Paul Kapustka, MSR

Niners fans may not have liked the final outcome on the scoreboard, but there was no complaining about the wireless network performance for the regular season home opener at Levi’s Stadium.

The somewhat limited debut of the highly anticipated instant replay feature for the Levi’s Stadium app was perhaps the technology highlight, with plays available for viewing seconds after they happened — when the feature finally got going later in the game. Our unofficial speedtests from various points around the stadium showed the Wi-Fi network and DAS network in top form, with solid results in the 20-plus Mbps range at most places for both networks.

We’re still waiting for the official postmortem results stats from the 49ers’ tech crew, but we did get some in-game messages from Niners VP of technology Dan Williams, who said that right before the 5:30 p.m. local time kickoff the usage peak was hit, with more than 19,000 simultaneous users on the Wi-Fi network, using throughput of 3.1 GB per second. Our unofficial guess is that the Niners’ opener may have set new single-game records for data traffic, but we’ll wait until we hear the final totals before we make any such proclamation.

The good news for Niners fans is that everywhere we went in the stadium, including on the top-level cheap-seat decks, the network was strong.

Replay feature sees limited action

If there was any tech downside, it was the limited availability of the instant replay feature. When talking about this feature earlier this year, team officials were adamant that it would be an unbelievable thing, with multiple camera angles and multiple choices of replays to watch. In reality, the feature wasn’t even available for most of the first half, and then when it did start working in the second half it only offered replays of the last two live plays, and two scoring highlights, one of which did not function at first.

Picture of app late in the first half.

Picture of app late in the first half.

Another beef we had with the replay feature was that it wasn’t clearly located on the “Game Center” part of the app; you had to know to click on the down arrow of the screen for the last play replay to appear. We found it only by accident, and would guess that not many fans found it or used it during the Niners’ loss to the Chicago Bears.

When we did watch the replays, however, we were simply amazed by the system’s performance — instant replays were available just seconds after a play had taken place, with a text play by play description as well. But again, there were no options for multiple camera angles, and there were only two “scoring play” highlights available when we last checked, and one (of an early field goal) didn’t have working video.

Other impressions from our stadium visit (which was made possible thanks to a press pass given to MSR by the Niners PR team):

— Concourses are fun places to watch: We watched the national anthem and opening kickoff and drive from the southwest concourse, one of the many places in Levi’s Stadium where you can stand and still see live game action. It was a packed house for the kickoff and first series, with many fans snapping phone pictures of the nearby field. East concourses were also good (though in one section an usher shooed us away from standing two-deep) as long as you kept the setting sun out of your eyes.

Fans take pictures of opening kickoff from southwest concourse.

Fans take pictures of opening kickoff from southwest concourse.

— Food runners were tired on the top deck: We stopped by for a quick chat with some of the food runners on the Pepsi deck on the north end of the stadium, and they looked pretty tired. Again, no official stats here but one runner said he’d been kept busy all game bringing food and drinks to fans who placed their orders via the app. “It’s pretty steep up here,” he said, pointing to the 400-level seating sections. “You get tired going up and down those steps.”

View from the Pepsi seating porch at the north end of Levi's Stadium

View from the Pepsi seating porch at the north end of Levi’s Stadium

— Clubs are the place to be: Several stories about the game noted that club-level seating was often empty, with fans perhaps spending time inside the comfortable beverage/food/gathering areas. Here’s a pregame look inside the United Club, located on the third level of the main building on the stadium’s west side.

United Club during pregame

United Club during pregame

— Signal strength: We also made several phone calls and did speedtests during halftime, when Snoop Dogg surprised us all with a mini-concert on the field. Not once during the game did we see any slowdowns in the network performance; the slowest Wi-Fi speed we found was 11 Mbps on the north concourse, where the team has admitted it didn’t put a lot of antennas (and is working to correct that).

Snoop on da big screen

Snoop on da big screen

— Light rail works fine: Then it was time to go home, and our choice to use the VTA light rail from Mountain View (instead of our press parking pass) was validated, as it took us less than an hour from the start of the line to the end of the line in Mountain View. All in all, an extremely solid home opener for one of the most ambitious stadium technology deployments out there.

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

Stadium Tech Report: Boingo, AT&T answer call for more DAS bandwidth at Chicago’s Soldier Field

December 26, 2013 by 3 Comments

Soldier FieldWhether or not the Chicago Bears will beat the Green Bay Packers this Sunday is a question still answerable only by higher deities. But if those powers that be decide to unleash weather conditions of biblical proportions again, at the very least the Soldier Field folks can be confident that their in-stadium network will stand up to the challenge.

Earlier this year, tornado weather hit Soldier Field and caused an unusual 2-hour delay during the Nov. 17 Bears-Ravens game. While the deluge was too dangerous for football, for Doug Lodder and Luca Serra, it was a big test to see if the stadium wireless network upgrades they’d recently helped install could stand up to a huge, unexpected traffic surge.

“We thought we’d probably see some good [network] usage with the weather delay and tornados,” said Lodder, vice president of business development at Boingo Wireless, which recently concluded a big network upgrade at the home of the NFL’s Chicago Bears.

“We saw double the usual traffic from both AT&T and Verizon customers during the 2-hour delay,” said Serra, director of sponsorship and media for SMG, the outside entity that manages Soldier Field for its owners, the Chicago Park District. “During that break, we didn’t hear a single complaint [about the wireless network] from the media or the fans. It was a great test — not a desired one in any way, shape or form, but a great test.”

Upgrades needed at ‘oldest’ big stadium Wi-Fi network

Luca Serra, SMG

Luca Serra, SMG

Even though you can’t really plan or design for surges that might happen during extreme situations, Serra and Lodder and others running the Soldier Field network knew last year that an overall upgrade was needed. Home of one of the earliest (if not the first) big-stadium DAS and Wi-Fi networks, Soldier Field was showing 80 percent year-over-year traffic growth on the Wi-Fi network, Lodder said in a recent joint phone interview with Serra.

Along with DAS partner AT&T, SMG and Boingo spent last year adding more DAS capacity so that Solider Field now has 250 DAS antennas to go along an undisclosed number of new Wi-Fi APs. Though AT&T did some specific upgrades to its DAS presence at Soldier Field (including adding support for its new 4G LTE network), all the major wireless carriers are represented in the DAS via the neutral hosting of Boingo.

Why did the firms decide Soldier Field needed an upgrade? While Lodder said its DAS, which first started operating in 2011, was “pretty cutting edge at the time,” during the past couple years, data usage at Soldier Field has skyrocketed.

“Everyone has a device, and there’s a lot more social engagement and sharing,” Lodder said. “We’ve seen a huge increase in data use.”

“With this large increase in use, we said ‘let’s address the issue’ and not let it get to a point where it’s a problem,” Serra said.

Moving fast and finding space

DAS gear at Soldier Field. Credit: Boingo Wireless

DAS gear at Soldier Field. Credit: SMG/Soldier Field

Both Serra’s and Lodder’s teams were familiar with the need to balance performance and aesthetics at the venerable stadium perched on the edge of Lake Michigan. Since the network was put in after Soldier Field’s extensive renovation was finished in 2003, special attention needed to be paid to placements of Wi-Fi and DAS antennas.

“It wasn’t just bolting APs on,” Serra said. “We had to be very protective of the aesthetics of the building.”

For Lodder, that sometimes means that the best placement isn’t always available.

“There’s always challenges with architecture at stadiums,” Lodder said. “In a perfect world, there might be a certain place you want to put an antenna. In the real world, you can almost always count on changing that 20 percent of the time.”

Doug Lodder, Boingo

Doug Lodder, Boingo

A bigger construction concern of late is where to put the extensive amount of back-end telco gear needed to support the DAS infrastructure and upgrades. “Carrier base stations need several thousand square feet of space, and those need to be rooms with connectivity and power,” Lodder said. At Solider Field, Serra said some unfinished space north of the stadium proper was converted into a DAS equipment room, since there wasn’t enough available space in the main building. Lodder said for the recent upgrade, additional power upgrades were installed as well.

Still, even with all the challenges the Boingo, AT&T and SMG teams were able to go from design to finished construction of the recent upgrade in 45 days this past summer, in part thanks to some interesting work schedules.

“After one preseason [football] game we had scaffolding going up at night, with three 24-hour shifts,” Lodder said. “It was a pretty accelerated build.”

There is no such thing as free Wi-Fi

One other interesting twist to the Boingo Wi-Fi network at Soldier Field is its cost — the company charges a $1.99 per day fee for Wi-Fi use, or you can purchase a regular Boingo monthly plan for $7.95 which will also provide access at Soldier Field.

Wi-Fi antennas hidden under stands at Soldier Field. Credit: SMG/Soldier Field

Wi-Fi antennas hidden under stands at Soldier Field. Credit: SMG/Soldier Field

While many if not most professional teams are making Wi-Fi services free to paying ticketholders, Serra and Lodder said that the Bears aren’t.

“The Bears are a tenant of the Park District, and no one [from the team] has ever said ‘we’re going to pay to turn it [Wi-Fi] on for free,’ ” Serra said. Lodder noted that in the end, someone somehow has to pay the cost of connectivity.

“Someone’s always got to pay for it — Wi-Fi isn’t free,” Lodder said. “Some teams may feel they’ve made enough on the tickets to offer [Wi-Fi] free, while in other cases users pay either with money or with eyeballs, by viewing some ads.”

While the NFL itself is still somewhat vague on its league-wide plans for in-stadium Wi-Fi — other than saying that teams should provide it — Serra and Lodder are confident that Soldier Field will be at the top of the chart when it comes to network performance.

“If and when they [the NFL] roll out standards for network performance, we’re going to exceed them,” Lodder said.

Filed Under: 4G LTE, AT&T, DAS, MSR Guides, NFL, Verizon Wireless, Wi-Fi Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Soldier Field gets upgraded DAS from AT&T, Boingo

October 23, 2013 by 3 Comments

We’re not sure exactly how much better the new DAS install is at Soldier Field in Chicago, but we are convinced that it may take some time for the mainstream media to learn the difference between better cellular and Wi-Fi.

(What do we mean? One Chicago TV station and the Chicago Tribune think that a new DAS means faster Wi-Fi. Ah well. In the meantime, keep reading MSR if you need clarity and details about stadium technology.)

In a somewhat confusing press release, Boingo and AT&T, in partnership with venue management services provider SMG, announced an “enhanced distributed antenna system network” at the home of the Chicago Bears, that wonderful old/new facility located hard along Lake Michigan’s shore just south of downtown.

What’s confusing about the release is that it doesn’t quite explain how and why Boingo and AT&T are partnering with SMG as neutral-host operators. Plus, it seems that both Boingo and AT&T have already been operating DAS installs at the stadium, so who knows how “new” the enhancements really are. Our best guess (we have emails in to both companies so expect more clarity soon) is that since Boingo has been operating Soldier Field’s Wi-Fi and AT&T is bullish on DAS installs everywhere, it makes sense to team up with an upgrade that will now provide better coverage, probably with more antennas and new coverage for AT&T’s 4G LTE network. We’d call this arrangement a win for Boingo, which is intent on building up its stadium DAS and Wi-Fi business. Plus, the companies have done business together before so maybe partnering for a DAS isn’t so confusing after all.

No word yet whether Verizon or Sprint or T-Mobile has signed on to participate in the DAS, or whether the new DAS will keep Bears fans online longer, distracting them from worrying about the health of Jay Cutler’s groin. Good thing to have as the snowflakes start flying in the Windy City.

UPDATE 1, 10/24: We are still seeking clarity on the business arrangement, but an AT&T spokesperson confirmed our guess about the LTE addition. Here is an official AT&T breakdown of the enhancements to the DAS: “The DAS equipment at Soldier Field is equivalent to about 7 individual cell sites, or enough to service a town about the size of 88,000. The DAS contains more than 250 stealth antennas inside and outside the stadium which have increased AT&T’s network capacity by approximately double (100%). The design changed when we added layers to the wedge shape that was previously used. The old system had 16 sectors, sliced like a pie. The new system has 22 sectors that service each section of the stadium as well as each level of the stadium.”

Sounds good. But now I’m thinking about pie. Pumpkin, with whipped cream. Hmmm.

UPDATE 2, 10/25: Now from the Boingo folks, who wouldn’t say more about operational details other than that Boingo and AT&T worked together on the upgrade. More from Boingo, which answers our question about whether there are other carriers using the DAS: “Boingo is responsible for the ongoing operation and management of the DAS network, working closely with both SMG at Soldier Field and AT&T. Boingo also manages Soldier Field DAS network access contracts for Verizon, Sprint and US Cellular.”

Filed Under: 4G LTE, AT&T, DAS, NFL, Wi-Fi Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

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