Dallas Cowboys

Stadium Tech Report: AT&T Stadium network a winner at CFP Championship game

January 12, 2015 by Paul Kapustka Leave a Comment

Inside AT&T Stadium at the College Football Championship game. Credit all photos: Paul Kapustka, MSR

It’s late here in North Texas and you know by now that Ohio State beat Oregon to win the first non-mythical college football championship. Behind the scenes at AT&T Stadium Monday night, the wireless network in AT&T Stadium was also a winner, standing up to the challenge of the 85,000-plus crowd on both the DAS and Wi-Fi front.

We’ll have a more thorough stadium report when we get time to digest all the info we gathered at the game (and get the network stats back from the AT&T Stadium tech crew) but one thing we learned before the game was that since November, the Wi-Fi network at AT&T Stadium grew by more than 280 access points, on top of a total somewhere in the 1,200 range. According to AT&T network folks the stadium here in Arlington, Texas, has been seeing game-day totals of 3.3 Terabytes of data carried on the Wi-Fi network — leading some here to believe that Monday’s championship game could well surpass 4 TB of data used at a single game, an unofficial record as far we know for a single-day, single facility network.

As guests of AT&T we also got a quick demonstration of LTE broadcast technology, which basically slices the available cellular spectrum into a channel that can provide live streams of video. We’ll have more on this new technology in another separate report, but it is something to watch for facilities that want video options but don’t want to go whole hog on Wi-Fi.

AT&T LTE Broadcast demo, showing a live streaming broadcast of the game

Even though we were housed in a field-level suite your intrepid MSR crew wandered all over the massive facility, and basically found great connectivity wherever we were. Two places stick out in my mind: At the very top of the nosebleed section in the south end zone the Wi-Fi dipped to just 1 Mbps, probably because the roof is so high there is no place for an access point. However, at that same spot the AT&T 4G LTE signal was around 7 Mbps, providing great connectivity in a tough to configure spot.

The other notable spot was in a “star level” suite (about the 6th level of the building), where we got a Wi-Fi signal of 28 Mbps download and 59 (no typo!) Mbps on the upload. Yes, suite people have it better but all around wherever we went we got consistent Wi-Fi signals in the high teens or low 20s, and LTE cellular signals (including Verizon 4G LTE) just under 10 Mbps. Like the Ohio State offense, the network at AT&T Stadium works really well and may have set a new record Monday night. More soon, and more images soon as well. For now, Elvis has left the building.

Ohio State Elvis is in the house #attstadium #cfbchampionsjip pic.twitter.com/alDLti4mJC

— paulkaps (@paulkaps) January 13, 2015

Outside in the frozen tundra of North Texas, aka Arlington

This place was humming all night long

AT&T 4G LTE speedtest, from the top of the stadium

The view from the nosebleed section

Some “suite” Wi-Fi speeds

Filed Under: 4G LTE, AT&T, Cisco, Dallas Cowboys, DAS, ESPN, Live sports via mobile, Live Sports Video Consumption, NCAA Football, NFL, Pac-12, University of Oregon, Verizon Wireless, Wi-Fi Tagged With: 4G LTE, AT&T Stadium, CFB championship, Dallas Cowboys, DAS, Mobile Sports Report, Ohio State, Oregon, Paul Kapustka, Stadium Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi

Stadium Tech Report — NFL stadium technology reports — NFC East

November 13, 2014 by Paul Kapustka 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 EAST

Reporting by Chris Gallo

Dallas Cowboys
AT&T Stadium
Seating Capacity: 105,121
Wi-Fi – Yes, 1,525 access points
DAS – Yes, 1,374 antennas
Beaconing – No

AT&T Fan Experience board with single message

Everything is bigger in Texas – including connectivity. AT&T Stadium features 1,525 Wi-Fi access points and 1,374 DAS antennas. That’s enough cellular capacity to service the small suburb of McKinney, Texas. While watching Tony Romo target Dez Bryant, Cowboys fans will notice a new 130-foot LED display along the east platform. The AT&T Fan Experience board features 40 robotic panels that work in combination with other stadium displays to entertain fans all game along. And don’t forget the big TV hanging in the middle of the place!

New York Giants
MetLife Stadium
Seating Capacity: 82,500
Wi-Fi – Yes, 850 access points
DAS – Yes, over 600 antennas
Beaconing – No

The Super Bowl champions just three years ago, it appears their bunk mates’ play is rubbing off on the Giants. Like the cross-town Jets, the G-Men missed the playoffs for the second straight season last year. If it’s any consolation, the Giants still share one sports top venues in MetLife Stadium. AT&T and Verizon gave enough love and attention the stadium last year as host of Super Bowl XLVII. Over 600 DAS antennas, 850 Wi-Fi access points, Cisco StadiumVision with over 2,100 HD TVs around the concourse – that’s a recipe for a good time at a game, at least from a connectivity standpoint.

Philadelphia Eagles
Lincoln Financial Field
Seating Capacity: 69,176
Wi-Fi – Yes, 600+ access points
DAS-Yes
Beaconing – No

Lincoln Financial Field is one of the “greenest” stadiums in all of professional sports. And that’s not just because of the Eagles’ colors. All (100 percent) of the Eagles operations are powered by the sun and the wind. The stadium’s connectivity is something fans can get behind too. With over 600 Wi-Fi access points and a group of Extreme Networks’ “Wi-Fi coaches”, the Eagles are doing everything they can to make sure fans are connected at games.

Washington Redskins
FedEx Field
Seating Capacity: 85,000
Wi-Fi – Limited / club level only
DAS-Yes
Beaconing – No

A new coach, name controversy, and a $27 million dollar renovation underway at FedEx Field. It’s been an offseason full of distractions in the nation’s capital. The good news: The team just signed a deal with supplier Huawei to put Wi-Fi in the stadium, first in the club seats and then (hopefully) next year in the full seating bowl.

Filed Under: 4G LTE, AT&T, Cisco, Comcast, Dallas Cowboys, DAS, NFL, Verizon Wireless, Wi-Fi Tagged With: AT&T, AT&T Stadium, Cisco, Dallas Cowboys, DAS, Extreme Networks, Lincoln Financial Field, Mobile Sports Report, New York Giants, NFC East, NFL, Paul Kapustka, Philadelphia Eagles, Stadium Wi-Fi, StadiumVision, Verizon Wireless, Washington Redskins, Wi-Fi

Planning a DAS deployment? Check out these AT&T stadium stats from football opening weekend

September 12, 2014 by Paul Kapustka Leave a Comment

There’s lots of shared belief out there that fans want to use mobile devices while they are attending sporting events. What we like even more here at Mobile Sports Report are hard numbers that tell us just how much fans are using mobile devices while they are in stadiums and arenas. Though sometimes hard to get, such statistics are great signposts for those who are planning to build their own stadium networks sometime soon, because it gives them a target to shoot for.

Courtesy of our friends over at AT&T, here are some traffic statistics gleaned from AT&T’s distributed antenna system (DAS) deployments in major professional and college football stadiums during last weekend’s games. According to AT&T, the average amount of cellular data used at a pro venue home opener in 2014 was 361 gigabytes, up 59 percent from season-opening games last year. The stats, remember, are only from AT&T DAS networks at the 16 NFL stadiums where AT&T has a DAS network presence.

The top stadium in terms of AT&T DAS traffic was Miami’s Sun Life Stadium with 1,035 GB (or 1.035 TB), followed by AT&T Stadium in Dallas with 889 GB and Atlanta’s Georgia Dome with 696 GB. It will be interesting to see whether or not any of those totals are surpassed by the San Francisco 49ers’ Levi’s Stadium, which hosts its first regular-season home game this Sunday.

On the collegiate side, the average opening-day traffic number was 288 GB, which is huge compared to the 2013 season average of 186 GB per game. The stats are an average taken from 25 Division 1 schools where AT&T has a DAS presence. And in case you were wondering where college football is king, the stats for schools in the South was an average of 343 GB, with the rest of the country checking in at 186 GB. The top three schools in terms of home-opener DAS traffic were Oklahoma with 866 GB, Georgia with 688, and the new stadium at Baylor with 686 GB.

More AT&T DAS stats follow. Remember, this is just a fraction of the actual traffic since many of these venues also have other carriers on DAS networks, as well as Wi-Fi networks in place. Other carriers and stadiums — send us your stats!

AT&T STADIUM DAS STATS

Year-over-Year Professional Mobile Data Increase

o 2014 home opener – 361GB average per venue

o 2013 season average – 227GB average per venue

· 2013 season average to 2014 season opener is a year-over-year increase of more than 59 percent

· 2013 season opener to 2014 season opener is a year-over-year increase of more than 58 percent

Opening Weekend Mobile Data Usage Professional vs. Collegiate

o 2014 professional season opener – 361GB average per venue

o 2014 collegiate season opener – 288GB average per venue

Top 5 Opening Weekend Professional Venues by Total Mobile Data

o Miami, FL – 1035GB

· Equivalent to more than 2.9 million social media post with photos

· Peak hour – 1-2pm ET – 146GB

o Dallas, TX – 889GB

· Equivalent to more than 2.5 million social media post with photos

· Peak hour – 2-3pm CT – 158GB

o Atlanta, GA – 696GB

· Equivalent to nearly 2 million social media post with photos

· Peak hour – 2-3pm ET – 159GB

o Chicago, IL – 452GB

· Equivalent to nearly 1.3 million social media post with photos

· Peak hour – 1-2pm CT – 107GB

o Pittsburgh, PA – 385GB

· Equivalent to more than 1.1 million social media post with photos

· Peak hour – 2-3pm ET – 83GB

Caveats:

· All figures include only data traffic seen on AT&T’s venue-specific mobile network.

· All data metrics come from only venues with a DAS where AT&T’s mobile network is on-air. These metrics are not comprehensive of every game played during the opening weekend for professional or college football.

· This data is compiled from 16 professional football stadiums and 25 division one college football stadiums that had opening week home games where AT&T is on-air on a DAS.

· All 2013 season average data is compiled from only venues with a DAS where AT&T’s mobile network was on-air and games where data was tracked and available.

ADDITIONAL AT&T COLLEGIATE DAS STATS

Regional Breakdown by Mobile Data Usage

o South – 343GB average per venue

o Rest of the US – 186GB average per venue

· Year-over-Year Mobile Data Increase

o 2014 home opener – 288GB average per venue

o 2013 season average – 155GB average per venue

· Top 5 Opening Weekend College Venues by Total Mobile Data

· Norman, OK – 866GB

o Equivalent to more than 2.4 million social media post with photos

· Athens, GA – 688GB

o Equivalent to more than 1.9 million social media post with photos

· Waco, TX – 686GB

o Equivalent to more than 1.9 million social media post with photos

· Auburn, AL – 506GB

o Equivalent to more than 1.4 million social media post with photos

· Los Angeles, CA – 469GB

o Equivalent to more than 1.3 million social media post with photos

Caveats:

· All figures include only data traffic seen on AT&T’s venue-specific mobile network.

· All data metrics come from only venues with a DAS where AT&T’s mobile network is on-air. These metrics are not comprehensive of every game played during the opening weekend for college football.

· This data is compiled from 25 division one college football stadiums that had opening week home games where AT&T is on-air on a DAS.

· All 2013 season average data is compiled from only venues with a DAS where AT&T’s mobile network was on-air and games where data was tracked and available.

· The “South” region is based off how it is qualified by the U.S. Census. It includes the following states: Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi, Tennessee, Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Texas.

Filed Under: 4G LTE, AT&T, Dallas Cowboys, DAS, NCAA Football, NFL, Wi-Fi Tagged With: AT&T, AT&T Stadium, Dallas Cowboys, DAS, Levi's Stadium, Miami Dolphins, Mobile Sports Report, NFL, Paul Kapustka, San Francisco 49ers, Stadium Wi-Fi, Sun Life Stadium

Dallas Cowboys, AT&T add more tech to AT&T Stadium, add fuel to ‘most-connected stadium’ debate

August 21, 2014 by Paul Kapustka 5 Comments

AT&T Stadium, North Texas, USA

During last Sunday’s first “real” football game at Levi’s Stadium, I was asked several times if I thought the San Francisco 49ers’ new home was the “most connected” venue ever. I hesitated and hedged my answer a bit, because when it comes to wireless networks and tech innovations I think AT&T Stadium — home of the Dallas Cowboys — needs to be mentioned in the same sentence as Levi’s.

This week AT&T and the Cowboys announced more enhancements to AT&T Stadium’s already powerful network, and a new toy for fans to interact with. First on the network side, AT&T said from last summer until now it has increased the capacity of the stadium’s DAS by 50 percent, with 1,300 DAS antennas now in place. On the Wi-Fi side the stadium now has more than 1,500 access points, which may be the most in any stadium anywhere, to the best of my knowledge. (According to the Niners’ press guide, Levi’s has 1,200 Wi-Fi APs.) Throw in the big TV hanging from the center of the roof and AT&T Stadium has to be part of any discussion about “the most connected stadium” in football, if not in all of sport.

AT&T Stadium’s new “Fan Experience Board” in louvering position. Credit all photos: AT&T/Dallas Cowboys.

(I’d also include AT&T Park in San Francisco in that argument, which has somewhere north of 1,200 Wi-Fi APs in a much smaller venue; from what we hear the two AT&T-sponsored stadiums have a friendly competition when it comes to tech deployments.)

On the new-toy side it should be fun to see the new 130-foot “AT&T Fan Experience Board” in action — according to AT&T and the Cowboys this contraption is built of 40 mirrored louvers which can rotate in sync, and can show ads, fan pictures and will also be part of what the team and AT&T are calling the “Unite this house” feature on a new fan app. We’ll let the Cowboys blog explain how this will work, on plays where Tony Romo is throwing to teammates instead of to opponents:

The “Unite the House” fan interaction feature on the app will alert fans at pivotal moments of the game through their mobile devices. As the stadium app vibrates, a message will be displayed providing the particular context and immediacy of the action. Fans will be guided to unlock their phones, hold their fingers on the Dallas Cowboys star and as more phones power up, the stadium will be full of strobes, not only from mobile devices, but also on the ribbon displays and the HD video board. The visual will gain intensity and speed as more fans join in, energizing the stadium and culminating in a final eruption of light and motion provided by the louvers that will canvas the entire stadium.

AT&T Stadium interactive screens

AT&T and the Cowboys also announced some large interactive screens — the Cowboys blog called them “life-sized iPhones” — where fans can swipe to learn more about Cowboys players, or Cowboys cheerleaders. Our guess is that both will be immensely popular. At Levi’s, there are some interactive displays and features — one, sponsored by Yahoo!, asks fans to answer trivia questions. While it’s neat to see these things emerge, I wonder if instead of fluffy features some interactive boards could be converted into things that could help you — like with stadium maps, or an app that would let a phone-less fan send a message to someone else’s device. Our guess is that you will see more, not less, of these interactive screens in the near future.

If nothing else, the Cowboys and AT&T seem to be showing that even off the field, the NFL is a competitive league — we will be interested to see how the technology deployments at other stadiums, like Jacksonville, play out. Look for more coverage and anlysis in our upcoming Q3 Stadium Tech Report issue, which will focus on… football. AT&T technology photos to follow.

AT&T Fan Experience board with single message

Message board showing photo compilation

Filed Under: 4G LTE, AT&T, Cisco, Dallas Cowboys, DAS, iPhone, NFL, Wi-Fi Tagged With: 4G LTE, AT&T, AT&T Park, AT&T Stadium, Dallas Cowboys, DAS, Levi's Stadium, Mobile Sports Report, NFL, Paul Kapustka, San Francisco 49ers, Stadium Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi

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

April 14, 2014 by Paul Kapustka 1 Comment

Want 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?

Filed Under: 4G LTE, AT&T, Basketball, Cisco, Dallas Cowboys, DAS, NCAA Hoops, NFL, Wi-Fi Tagged With: AT&T, AT&T 4G LTE, AT&T Stadium, Dallas, Dallas Cowboys, DAS, Final Four, Mobile Sports Report, Paul Kapustka, Stadium Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi

Friday Grab Bag: More Thursday Night Football? New land speed record set

October 18, 2013 by Greg Quick Leave a Comment

In case you were dying to know which of the new iPhones from Apple is the top seller, wait no more. Computerworld, with an assist from Consumer Intelligence Research Partners has done the heavy lifting for you.

The results are really not that surprising, the high end iPhone 5S is outselling the much less expensive iPhone 5C by better than two to one. It said that 64% bought the 5S, 27% bought the 5C and the remaining 9% bought the older 4S.

Lack of viewers leading to more Thursday night games?
According to the Wall Street Journal the NFL is looking at adding additional games to its slate of Thursday night broadcasts, adding to the 13 games that are already broadcast on that day of the week by making some doubleheaders.

The WSJ said that the reason is that the league is disappointed in the ratings that its broadcasts bring in, which while high for that day of the week are lower than Sunday and Monday. The NFL is denying the rumor saying that it is false.

Of course it could not end there. So Jerry Jones, the Cowboys owner said that the league is indeed thinking about starting to play doubleheaders on Thursday, which the league again denied.

Jessi Combs sets land speed record
Time to reset the clock to count down when the latest land speed record will be broken, as Jessi Combs driving a converted F-104 Lockheed Starfighter, just broke the women’s land speed record, one that managed to last 48 years, according to Gizmag.

The old record was 308.51 miles per hour set by Lee Breedlove in 1965 on Utah’s Salt Lake Flats. Combs hit 392.954 mph running at Oregon’s Alvord Desert course. The vehicle had a mere 52,000 hp, without the afterburners going.

Will the latest version of Android and a new smartphone arrive this month?
There are hints that the next generation of the Android operating system, version 4.4 and a new Nexus smartphone, will be announced on Oct. 28, due to hints that have been found in a number of Google’s Twitter messages.

The rumor campaign is based around KitKat, the code name for the next version of the operating system, and yes it is based on the candy bar. According to the LA Times the tweets could contain cryptic clues that point to the rollout. Well we have two weeks to see if that is true.

Filed Under: Android, Apple, Apps, Athlete to Follow, Basketball, Bonneville Salt Flats, Dallas Cowboys, Google, iPhone, NBA, NFL Tagged With: Android, Apple, Dallas Cowboys, iPhones, Jessi Combs, NFL