Mobile Sports Report

AT&T sets new DAS traffic records for Super Bowl with 1.7 Terabyte mark

February 2, 2015 by Paul Kapustka

University of Phoenix Stadium

AT&T said its customers set new records for Super Bowl and professional football game wireless data consumption, with a total of 1.7 terabytes of traffic used in and around the University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale, Ariz., Sunday night.

In a blog post from AT&T senior executive vice president John Donovan AT&T said it saw 696 gigabytes of wireless data used on its in-stadium DAS Sunday night, with an additional 1 TB used in and around the stadium in the surrounding parking lots and the Westgate entertainment district, a mall/restaurant complex that is connected to the UoP stadium area. The 1.7 TB mark surpasses the 1.4 TB DAS mark AT&T saw at the recent College Football Playoff championship game in Arlington, Texas, on Jan. 12.

Donovan’s blog post contains some interesting looks back — with a peak usage of 125 GB per hour Sunday, AT&T saw another new high mark, one that seems to say that usage of wireless data at stadiums is still climbing with no roof (retractable or not) in sight. Here’s a couple quotes:

Since 2011 – inclusive of the last five Big Games – the total data usage on AT&T’s in-stadium network has increased from 177GB to 696GB and peak hour data usage has increased from 30GB to 125GB.

And:

These numbers don’t come as a total shock as we experienced several high marks this season. In total, from 253 games at 31 stadiums, our customers have used more than 85.7TB of mobile data on our venue-specific cellular networks. That’s equivalent to more than 245M social media posts with photos from 253 games (an average of almost 1M social media posts per game).

We are still waiting for results from the stadium Wi-Fi network… will the total break the 6 TB mark set at the CFP championship game? Stay tuned! More AT&T infographic fun below.

click on photo for larger image

Filed Under: 4G LTE, AT&T, Super Bowl Tagged With: 4G LTE, AT&T, DAS, Mobile Sports Report, New England Patriots, Paul Kapustka, Seattle Seahawks, Super Bowl, Super Bowl wireless data, Super Bowl wireless traffic, Super Bowl XLIX, University of Phoenix Stadium

Super DAS: AT&T, Verizon beefed up Phoenix area with mobile cell towers and more DAS

February 2, 2015 by Paul Kapustka

AT&T Cell on Wheels (COW) deployment outside the ESPNZone in Phoenix. Credit all photos: AT&T (click on any photo for a larger image)

While we wait for the traffic stats from the incredibly exciting Super Bowl XLIX, here’s the final installment of our Super DAS series — in which the two major U.S. wireless carriers, AT&T and Verizon Wireless, provide some details about how they beefed up coverage in and around Phoenix to handle the expected Super Bowl communications crush.

The lengths to which AT&T and Verizon went to ensure no signals were dropped are interesting from several business points of view; to be sure, no major carrier wants Twitter to erupt with reports of dropped calls from a major event. (AT&T folks still grimace when you bring up the historical benchmark for this type of problem, SXSW and Twitter.)

The flood-the-zone type of temporary enhancements now brought in on a regular basis for big events also point out the ongoing need for distributed antenna system (DAS) deployments: the basic fact of our ever more connected lives simply means that for large public venues, or places where lots of people gather at once, the legacy cellular network designs simply can’t keep up.

ESPNZone DAS gear in underground garage

To make sure it could, AT&T said it deployed 10 cell towers on wheels (aka “COWS”) to the Phoenix area in advance of the weekend, while also upgrading its equipment at DAS installations like the one Crown Castle had at the University of Phoenix Stadium as well as at other points around town. AT&T folks were kind enough to supply us with plenty of photos of the deployments — we especially like the DAS built in an underground garage near the ESPNZone outlet in Phoenix.

Verizon also said it deployed 13 COWs and upgraded many DAS deployments in the Phoenix area prior to the Super Bowl, and even said it had a team of network technicians on hand to make sure traffic kept running smoothly.

How did it all work out? So far, we haven’t seen any reports of missed cellular connections during Super Bowl weekend (which also included the Waste Management golf tournament in the area, further adding to cellular pressure). What it does make us wonder about is the economic solution in the future to big-crowd wireless traffic concerns, which clearly aren’t limited to inside the event venue anymore. Are more portable deployments the way forward, or will we see more DAS installations that can be upgraded quickly on the fly?

More photos below!

AT&T COW with box on roof

Another AT&T COW

AT&T COW at Wild Horse Pass

AT&T COW deployment in downtown Phoenix

Downtown COW on a roof

ESPNZone DAS cabling run

Hyatt Gainey Ranch COW

Filed Under: 4G LTE, AT&T, DAS, NFL, Super Bowl, Verizon Wireless Tagged With: AT&T, Cell on Wheels, COW, DAS, Mobile Sports Report, Paul Kapustka, Phoenix, Super Bowl, Super Bowl cellular, University of Phoenix Stadium, Verizon Wireless

Extreme, SignalShare team up to bring Wi-Fi to Detroit Red Wings’ Joe Louis Arena

January 29, 2015 by Paul Kapustka

Joe Louis Arena, Detroit. Credit all photos: Dave Reginek / Detroit Red Wings (click on any photo for larger image)

Extreme Networks and SignalShare, which earlier this year collaborated to bring Wi-Fi networks to an NFL stadium and a college football stadium and basketball arena, have scored a new goal, teaming up to bring fan-facing Wi-Fi services to the Detroit Red Wings’ Joe Louis Arena.

Announced today, the deal trails the actual Wi-Fi network, which has been active at the 20.066-seat arena since at least earlier this month. According to Extreme Red Wings fans have already been consuming wireless data from the about 290 Wi-Fi access points currently installed in the venue, with a few more on the way as final network tuning takes place.

Tod Caflisch, director of information technology for the Red Wings, said there had been some previous attempts to bring Wi-Fi into the “Joe,” as it is known locally since opening in 1979, but those efforts didn’t pan out. The latest push, however, found what Caflisch called “an easy choice” in picking the Extreme/SignalShare team to bring Wi-Fi to the stadium, following similar tag-team deals this past year for networks at the Jacksonville Jaguars’ EverBank Field and the University of Maryland’s football and basketball facilities.

“Everybody who we talked to had nothing but great things to say” about the Extreme IdentiFi Wi-Fi technology platform, and its combination with SignalShare’s network optimization skills and its LiveFi audience engagement application. Though there is no mention in the press release about plans to use Extreme’s Purview analytics software or SignalShare’s new LiveFi nGage product suite, some of that may have to do with the fact that the current network at Joe Louis Arena is a bit of a stopgap solution, since the Red Wings are scheduled to move to a brand new home in time for the 2017 season.

Wi-Fi antennas at the “Joe” displaying the cleverly named SSID

From the sounds of happy collaboration that echoed through a joint phone call with representatives from the Red Wings, Extreme and SignalShare, it seems like this is a networking partnership that’s just getting started, with lots of promise for the future. Even though it is a bit of a stopgap network, the Wings are still looking to add features like instant replays and in-game contests via the YinzCam-developed app platform that the Red Wings currently have in use.

“We wanted to put in [a network] that would be economical and flexible, since we knew it was going to be short term,” Caflisch said. But in a few years, he joked, “we’re going to go from the Flintstones to the Jetsons” with the new arena. Extreme and SignalShare, he said, “are a very good group of people, who are interested in our specific solution. They made it easy to move forward with this.”

Norman Rice, senior vice president of corporate development for Extreme Networks, said bringing Wi-Fi to a closed-roof hockey arena was a little bit different project for Extreme, which has made its mark in big, open-air NFL stadium deployments that include Gillette Stadium in New England, Philadelphia’s Lincoln Financial Field, and Seattle’s CenturyLink Field, among others.

Getting Wi-Fi seems a good reason to celebrate and toss an octopus or two

“But we were able to work very closely with Tod and his team, and we are very pleased to be working with the Red Wings as our first NHL venue,” said Rice. He compared the Red Wings’ owners, the Ilitch family, to the Kraft family in New England, as holding an influential position among league owners, giving Extreme another “strategic reason” to pursue the Wi-Fi deal.

SignalShare founder Joe Costanzo said that he expects hockey crowds to behave in similar fashion to other crowds using mobile devices at large public venues, mainly spending time connecting with friends via social media. “I think it [the fan activity] will be true to what we see across other venues, mainly skewed toward social media,” Costanzo said. “We’ll learn more as we do the official launch.”

The Red Wings’ Caflisch has already started to learn about wireless fan activity at hockey games, which perhaps not surprisingly has shown peaks when the Zamboni is out clearing the ice. “There are also some noticeable [traffic] spikes right after the Wings score,” Caflisch said. “It’s kind of cool to see that.”

Filed Under: Extreme Networks, NHL, Wi-Fi Tagged With: Detroit Red Wings, Extreme Networks, Joe Louis Arena, Mobile Sports Report, NHL, Paul Kapustka, SignalShare, Stadium Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi

Big DAS news: CommScope buys TE Connectivity’s telecom and wireless business for $3 Billion

January 28, 2015 by Paul Kapustka

It’s a little bit industry insider baseball but in the world of DAS big deals like this don’t come along that often. Yes we’re talking about the deal that went down Wednesday, with communications infrastructure supplier CommScope acquiring the telecom, enterprise and wireless businesses of former rival TE Connectivity for $3 billion.

There’s more to the businesses of both CommScope and TE Connectivity than DAS, but if you read MSR you know TE and CommScope as major players in the DAS infrastructure and gear business. In fact, for the last two big stories on our pages — the upcoming Super Bowl and the College Football Playoff championship game — TE Connectivity and CommScope were the gear providers behind the scene, with TE gear being used at the University of Phoenix DAS and CommScope at the core of the AT&T Stadium DAS.

We asked Rick Aspan, vice president for corporate communications at CommScope, to provide some quick details on a deal we’re sure to talk more about in the future. For now here’s a quick email Q and A which focuses on the DAS side of the deal:

Mobile Sports Report: What percentage of the deal has to do with DAS? Was DAS a big/small/medium part of the reason?

Rick Aspan: The Wireless business of TE Connectivity, which is almost entirely their DAS business, was $164 million in sales for the year ending September 2014. The other two businesses we’re acquiring were Enterprise ($627 million) and Telecom ($1.1 billion). So the DAS/wireless business is by far the smallest piece. That said, we’re excited about adding all three to our existing business. We feel they all are very complementary and will contribute to our growth and ability to serve customers.

Mobile Sports Report: What specifically was a fit? Talent, technology or customers?

Rick Aspan: All of the above. TE Connectivity has a strong engineering culture and a record of innovation. Post-acquisition, we will add approximately 7,000 patents and patent applications from them, giving us nearly 10,000 overall. And those TE businesses have some great customer relationships with key industry players that will help strengthen CommScope’s position across multiple markets, including DAS.

Mobile Sports Report: How much does CommScope see the overall DAS market growing, and how will this help?

Rick Aspan: DAS remains one of our fastest growing businesses, reflecting the accelerated drive from operators and building owners/managers to add capacity and coverage indoors and within large venues. We can’t provide specifics yet on the TE DAS business and how it will help, but we feel it’s a great complement to our existing market position in DAS.

Filed Under: 4G LTE, AT&T, DAS Tagged With: 4G LTE, AT&T, CommScope, DAS, Mobile Sports Report, Paul Kapustka, TE Connectivity

Sonim’s rugged LTE phones get public-safety trials at Super Bowl, World Ski Championships

January 28, 2015 by Paul Kapustka

Sonim XP7 handset

The new XP7 ruggedized LTE smartphone from Sonim Technologies will get some on-the-scene testing by public safety professionals at both the Super Bowl as well as the upcoming World Ski Championships in Vail, Colo., according to Sonim, a San Mateo, Calif.-based maker of ruggedized devices.

Expected to be publicly announced Friday, the news that Sonim’s newest ruggedized LTE handset will be tested by firefighters from the Phoenix Fire Department during their Super Bowl deployments is significant for those concerned with public-safety operations around large public venues, since it offers a new way for industry-standard applications to be shared in a potentially “extreme” environment. With support for both standard wireless-carrier LTE networks as well as the emerging “FirstNet” public safety LTE frequency, the Sonim XP7 also offers one potential path toward the long-desired goal of having communication devices that can allow different first-responder agencies to communicate with each other, or to more simply share information from different devices, applications or networks.

While the Phoenix test deployment of XP7 handsets will use AT&T LTE airwaves, a similar test process scheduled to take place in Vail and Beaver Creek at the Feb. 2-15 FIS World Ski Championships will use a demonstration version of the Band Class 14 LTE public safety broadband network, according to a release from FirstNet Colorado.

The Vail demonstration will make use of a Distributed Antenna System (DAS) that was built for the town of Vail by neutral host provider Crown Castle, as well as the Sonim phones, among other devices and services.

While it has the first-glance look of a regular smartphone, the Sonim XP7 has a host of ruggedized features including long battery life, an extra-loud speaker, protection against drops and weather, a touchscreen accessible with gloves, and a screen viewable in bright sunlight. In a recent interview with Sonim CEO Bob Plaschke, MSR got to see and hold Plashcke’s XP7, a bulky device that certainly feels like it could stand up to extreme weather and rough handling. In addition to its obvious target market of first responders and other extreme-condition businesses, the XP7 is also being targeted at extreme athletes and outdoor-lifestyle customers, who should be able to purchase the device from major U.S. wireless carriers later this year.

In Phoenix, the Sonim phone will be compared to consumer-grade smartphones in a test using a custom-built firehouse alert app, according to Sonim. The Phoenix firefighters will also test the XP7’s ability to act as a Wi-Fi hotspot, and will also test its compatibility and interoperability with other mobile devices.

Filed Under: 4G LTE, Apps, AT&T, DAS, NFL, Olympics, Outdoor Activities, Skiing, Wi-Fi Tagged With: 4G LTE, Band 14, Crown Castle, Firefighters, first responders, FirstNet, LTE, Mobile Sports Report, Paul Kapustka, Phoenix, public safety, ruggedized phones, Sonim Technologies, Super Bowl, Vail

Super DAS, Part 2: Super Bowl stadium DAS expands to address increased demand for cellular connectivity

January 27, 2015 by Paul Kapustka

Editor’s note: This story is part 2 of a series of profiles of the providers of the extensive Distributed Antenna System (DAS) deployment for Super Bowl XLIX at and around the University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale, Ariz. and other parts of the Phoenix city area as well. Stay tuned all week as we highlight how DAS will keep Super Bowl fans connected, no matter where they roam in and around Phoenix and Glendale this week and weekend.

DAS antenna inside the University of Phoenix Stadium. Credit all photos: TE Connectivity

Two years ago, the University of Phoenix Stadium had a pretty good distributed antenna system (DAS) network to handle cellular communications inside the building. But with Super Bowl XLIX coming to the Glendale, Ariz., facility this year, pretty good wouldn’t be good enough — so the stadium’s network operators expanded the DAS by almost 50 percent in preparation for the game-day network surge expected on Feb. 1.

For fans attending the big game with cellular devices in hand that information may be comforting enough; thanks to a bigger, better DAS that is built to service all the major U.S. wireless carriers, they should have no problem getting a signal. Stadium technology professionals, however, usually want to know more about such expansion plans: What does it really mean to increase DAS capacity? How does that new DAS stack up to others in different stadiums and arenas?

More sectors means more capacity

For the Crown Castle neutral-host DAS at the University of Phoenix Stadium, there is one quick measure of how much the DAS expanded: More sectors. In DAS parlance, a “sector” is an area that has a dedicated amount of base station capacity; for the University of Phoenix Stadium DAS, the number of sectors increased from 33 two years ago to 48 sectors now, according to John Spindler, director for product management at DAS gear maker TE Connectivity. TE’s FlexWave Prism and FlexWave Spectrum DAS gear are part of the infrastructure deployed by neutral host Crown Castle in the UoP network.

John Spindler, TE Connectivity

Without getting too deep into telecom physics, more sectors in the same amount of space means more capacity. And when it comes to all the different flavors of phones and carrier spectrum, there’s a lot that goes into a DAS to use up that capacity. With all four major U.S. carriers (AT&T, Verizon Wireless, Sprint and T-Mobile) using the DAS, the infrastructure must support a full range of cellular spectrum, from 700 MHz LTE signals to LTE, CDMA, UMTS and EVDO signals in the 800 MHz, 850 MHz, 1900 MHz and 2100 MHz bands. The DAS inside the stadium will use 228 remote antenna units, according to Crown Castle.

“More frequencies, more MIMO [multiple-in, multiple-out antenna-enhancement technology] and heavier sectoring,” is how Spindler described the general needs for most DAS upgrades, and for the UoP DAS, where Spindler foresees another big number for Super Bowl stadium DAS traffic on Feb. 1.

“I would expect to see record [DAS] numbers,” Spindler said.

One DAS to rule them all

DAS active integration panel

Last year, the DAS situation at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey was especially tough to explain, since both AT&T and Verizon built their own separate infrastructures. According to AT&T its DAS customers at Super Bowl XLVIII used 624 gigabytes of traffic, a record then but a figure that has been surpassed many times this past football season at both college and pro football venues (the recent College Football Playoff championship game, for instance, saw 1.4 TB of DAS traffic for AT&T customers at AT&T Stadium). Verizon claimed last year that its customers used 1.9 TB of wireless data during the Super Bowl, but Verizon never provided specifics whether that number represented just DAS traffic, or Verizon customer usage of the MetLife Wi-Fi network as well.

Either way, the guess is that the DAS at the University of Phoenix Stadium will set new Super Bowl traffic records on Feb. 1, and by all accounts the infrastructure seems ready to handle it. Spindler, for one, said the Crown Castle DAS is “definitely well designed.” And Travis Bugh, senior wireless consultant for CDW (which installed the new Wi-Fi system at UoP), said he was also impressed by the performance of the Crown Castle DAS, which he said seems more than ready for the coming Super Bowl crush.

NEXT: What are the carriers doing to supplement the DAS coverage?

Filed Under: 4G LTE, AT&T, DAS, NFL, Seattle Seahwaks, Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon Wireless, Wi-Fi Tagged With: 4G LTE, 700 MHz, AT&T, Crown Castle, DAS, Mobile Sports Report, Paul Kapustka, Sprint, Stadium Wi-Fi, T-Mobile, TE Connectivity, University of Phoenix Stadium, Verizon Wireless, Wi-Fi