Ruckus Wireless

Ruckus will provide Wi-Fi for new MLS Earthquakes stadium in San Jose

March 24, 2014 by Paul Kapustka 3 Comments

Ruckus Wireless has scored a deal to provide a Wi-Fi network for the San Jose Earthquakes, in the team’s new 18,000-seat stadium slated to open in 2015.

The sponsorship agreement will see Ruckus designing and supplying the high-capacity Wi-Fi network in the new stadium, which will be located on Coleman Avenue in San Jose, near the city airport. According to Ruckus the network will use more than 150 of the company’s Ruckus ZoneFlex access points. David Callisch, vice president of corporate marketing for Ruckus, said the deal is a “partnership” with the Earthquakes, with Ruckus providing both some equipment discounts and technical and marketing assistance to make sure the network works well and is readily discovered by the fans coming to the arena.

“This is an exciting project that our fans can look forward to utilizing at our new stadium,” said Earthquakes president Dave Kaval, in a prepared statement. “We want our stadium to reflect our community, and technological innovation is a key component of Silicon Valley. Ruckus Wireless is a great fit because of their local roots and experience working not just with Silicon Valley Wi-Fi network deployments, but with these types of deployments around the world.”

The San Jose deal adds to a growing list of soccer stadium deployment wins for Ruckus, which already provides Wi-Fi at 20,000-seat plus Rio Tinto Stadium in Salt Lake City, Utah (home of the MLS Real Salt Lake club) as well as at several venues in Brazil being readied for the upcoming World Cup. Ruckus also provides the Wi-Fi at Time-Warner Cable Arena in Charlotte, N.C., home of the NBA’s Bobcats, and was also behind a new Wi-Fi network at the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, Calif.

Callisch said the free app at the BNP Open, which allowed fans to watch live video of matches at courts other than the one they were sitting in front of, was the kind of in-stadium use that a cellular DAS just can’t handle.

“A 4G signal is just not suitable for something like high-quality video,” said Callisch. “You really need Wi-Fi for high capacity applications.”

Though Ruckus does sell gear for regular, indoor office-type networks, its line of advanced access points with directional antennas make it a good fit for stadium venues, where being able to fine-tune coverage is a necessity.

Ruckus, which went public on Nov. 16 of 2012, finished its fiscal 2013 year with $263.1 million in revenue, a 22.6 percent increase from the previous year. Its Q4 revenues were $73.0 million. Though Callisch wouldn’t break out what part of that total stadium and other large-venue contracts represent, he did say they all helped the bottom line.

Though large venue deals may involve discounts and other charges for marketing or extra technical help, Callisch did say that any time you deliver equipment in the hundreds, it’s a good business deal.

“We make money on all the [stadium] deals,” Callisch said. “It’s a growing vertical market for us.”

Filed Under: DAS, MLS, Soccer, Tennis, Wi-Fi Tagged With: Indian Wells tennis, Mobile Sports Report, Paul Kapustka, Ruckus Wireless, San Jose Earthquakes, Stadium Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi, ZoneFlex

Ruckus Scores Wi-Fi Deal for Soccer Stadiums in Brazil — But Will Wi-Fi be Missing in Action at Brazil’s 2014 World Cup?

September 24, 2013 by Paul Kapustka 2 Comments

The curious wording of a press release out today is making us wonder: Will in-stadium Wi-Fi be missing in action during the soccer World Cup next year in Brazil?

The thing that got us asking this question is the release today of news from Wi-Fi gear vendor Ruckus Wireless, which trumpets a deal for more than 360 Ruckus wireless access points, to be deployed in two of Brazil’s biggest soccer stadiums. But the release doesn’t mention the World Cup at all, and there is no date given for when the equipment may be installed.

While our guess (we are waiting for word back from Ruckus) is that there is some World Cup wireless rights deal that precludes supplying vendors like Ruckus from using the term “World Cup” in any announcements, the press release got us looking to see if any of the other stadiums that will be used in the month-long tourney already have or have plans to get Wi-Fi before the soccer starts. So far, we haven’t been able to find anything concrete that spells out whether or not Wi-Fi will be available at any of the 12 venues across Brazil. Our short history in covering this market tells us that if there isn’t a press release saying that Wi-Fi will be available, you can bet that it probably won’t be.

For the sake of the thousands of futbol fans who will no doubt be traveling to Brazil for the matches, we hope we’re wrong. But the best info we have found in a limited bit of Internet searching are a few articles from ZDNet’s Brazil Contributing Editor Angelica Mari. For the most part, the information seems to come from hopeful press releases, like this one about a plan for Sao Paulo to invest $22 million in a free Wi-Fi project, something Mari notes has been promised and not delivered many times before. In July Mari reported that the World Cup said it would have free Wi-Fi at all matches, but again, there were no specifics about deployments and her cautionary line, “But the actual ability of mobile providers to deliver is questionable,” should probably be taken as a pretty good warning that not all is well when it comes to Wi-Fi at the games.

For Ruckus, the deal to put wireless access points into two of Brazil’s biggest stadiums — the 71,000-seat National Stadium, also known as Estádio Nacional de Brasília, and Arena Octávio Mangabeira (also known as Arena Fonte Nova, depending on who you ask), a 50,433-seat facility in the city of Salvador — is another international win, and proof that Ruckus gear is passing the test when it comes to dense public facilities. ~~But whether the gear be active in time for World Cup action is still unknown.~~ UPDATE: Ruckus has confirmed that the gear is scheduled to be working by next June. Apparently we were also correct in assuming there is a rights deal that precludes the use of the term “World Cup” in any such announcements.

Unlike the London Olympics, which were amazingly the most un-wired games in history, the 2014 World Cup is looking like it might be a bit of a communications nightmare, given that local citizens like Mari routinely note that the country’s cellular infrastructure and services leave much to be desired.

Another possible scenario is that the Ruckus deal is just part of a bigger deal, where Ruckus would be one of several providers to the consortium of Latin America telecom providers (Claro, Oi, Telefónica, and TIM) who are in charge of World Cup communications. That might explain why a Ruckus release didn’t say World Cup, or mention other stadiums. Word on the street is that press announcements for World Cup infrastructure are being kept tight to the vest, so maybe we’ll hear more soon.

Filed Under: FIFA, Soccer, Wi-Fi Tagged With: Brazil, Mobile Sports Report, Paul Kapustka, Ruckus, Ruckus Wireless, Stadium Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi, World Cup 2014

Wi-Fi Whispers Bulletin: Cisco Buys Meraki for $1.2 Billion

November 18, 2012 by Paul Kapustka 2 Comments

Why wait until Wednesday? No whispering here, with the news breaking Sunday of Cisco’s $1.2 billion purchase of mesh-networking Wi-Fi provider Meraki. Coming on the heels of last week’s successful public offering by Ruckus Wireless, you’d have to say that Wi-Fi is the hottest topic in the greater tech world right now.

And if you didn’t want to say it, we will.

From a sports-specific viewpoint, it’s not clear how the Meraki purchase might help Cisco’s sports and entertainment group, since Meraki has reportedly had much more success in enterprise/campus deployments, where its easy setup and cloud-based management systems ease the process of deploying wireless networks. Since stadiums are a lot more high-touch — there are unusual RF problems caused by the buildings themselves, and the crowds of fans require fine-tuning of antenna directions — the Meraki gear may not be a big bonus, at least initially. Though according to Meraki, its gear has handled big outdoor events quite well, including the Monterey Jazz Festival. So maybe Meraki will help Cisco in the stadium-network battleground.

From a big-picture view, you can never be too thin, too rich or have too much networking intellectual property. And the billion-dollar-buy (all cash!) is a sign that Cisco, the biggest player at the table, isn’t hesitant about trying to buy a winning hand.

While we here at Mobile Sports Report have been concentrating on the deployment of stadium Wi-Fi networks, it’s clear that as a whole the greater public Wi-Fi market, of which stadiums are a part, is set to get bigger, faster. This weekend’s big cash events are just the start.

Filed Under: Cisco, Wi-Fi Tagged With: BYOD, Cisco, IPO, Meraki, Mobile Sports Report, Paul Kapustka, Ruckus Wireless, Wi-Fi

Wednesday Wi-Fi Whispers: Ruckus Goes Narrow with New Directional Antenna

November 7, 2012 by Paul Kapustka 1 Comment

Ruckus Wireless on Tuesday announced a new suite of products and an enhanced overall focus aimed at addressing high-density networking needs like stadiums, including an innovative antenna technology that can focus beams into smaller angles — all the better for servicing tightly packed crowds.

If Wi-Fi networking infrastructure deployments were originally about coverage, they’ve now switched to more concerns about capacity, said Steve Hratko, director of carrier marketing at Ruckus, who met with us at the Wireless Broadband Alliance’s Wi-Fi Global Congress conference in San Francisco Tuesday. And when it comes to deploying antennas and other infrastructure to serve high-density crowds, Hratko said, “all the rules of thumb have changed.”

One of those rules has to do with antennas. Historically antennas were designed to cast as wide a signal as possible, to cover the most airspace with the fewest number of devices. Now, with demand increasing at explosive levels, to serve high-density areas like stadiums takes some different deployment thinking, like antennas that use narrower beams. Ruckus’ new Wi-Fi access points, Hratko said, can shrink their signals into 30-degree slices, making it easier to aim them at a specific sector of seats, or other geographically specific areas, like airport waiting rooms.

“Sometimes, the beams can’t be narrow enough,” said Hratko. “It all ends up being more clever about where you put antennas.”

Ruckus, which is in the midst of preparing for an initial public offering, is also ready to help clients with its deployment smarts, which it is learning as it puts its gear into more high-density places like Time-Warner Cable Arena, where Ruckus gear helped keep the Democratic National Convention wirelessly connected earlier this summer. We’re sure we’ll hear more high-density talk from Ruckus sometime soon.

BT: Olympics Used 6 Terabytes of Wi-Fi Traffic

We’re going to try to track down the presentation — it was loaded with cool networking statistics — but one of the ones we did write down during a BT talk about Olympics network usage at the Wi-Fi conference was the staggering stat that there was 6 Terabytes of Wi-Fi traffic consumed on BT’s London networks during the games this summer — with some 697,383 separate Wi-Fi sessions initiated on the 1,500 access points BT had installed for Olympics use.

Though BT exec Chris Bruce said the network performed without many hitches — we heard some different stories — by all accounts the Wi-Fi networks on the Games sites apparently held up even in the face of record demand. It’s old news to us here at MSR but Bruce said if you didn’t believe it before, believe it now — crowds at big sporting events want to take pictures and video and share them instantly.

“Crowd behavior now is such that everyone wants to capture the moment and share the moment,” Bruce said, meaning that event hosts better have super-sturdy Wi-Fi and cellular or be ready for the inevitable immediate social-media backlash. One funny story he noted was that when planning started for the London Games 10 years out, the idea of having a Wi-Fi network wasn’t even considered. His advice for future big-event network planners?

“Take your demand model and keep revising it,” he said. “You just can’t predict it ahead of time.”

Filed Under: DAS, Olympics, Wi-Fi Tagged With: BT, Mobile Sports Report, Olympics, Paul Kapustka, Ruckus Wireless, Wi-Fi

Wednesday Wi-Fi Whispers: Ruckus Files for IPO, Qualcomm Stadium Gets DAS

October 10, 2012 by Paul Kapustka Leave a Comment

It’s about as far from a whisper as you can get, but in the Wi-Fi world the big news of the week was Wi-Fi vendor Ruckus Wireless filing for a $100 million IPO last Friday. As you’ve read here earlier Ruckus is heavily involved with the growing market for big-space Wi-Fi (like stadiums, racetracks and other event areas) and with healthy revenues ($120 million in 2011) the long-rumored move became a reality with the SEC Filing that makes for such good hard-data reading.

The part we like the best in Ruckus’ S-1 is this bit about how big the market is getting for what Ruckus calls its “carrier class” Wi-Fi products:

According to Infonetics, the market for Wi-Fi networking solutions for carriers is expected to grow from $296 million in 2011 to $2.8 billion in 2016, representing a 57% compound annual growth rate. According to Gartner, the market for Wi-Fi networking solutions for enterprises is expected to grow from $3.4 billion in 2011 to $6.9 billion in 2016, representing a 15% compound annual growth rate. Carrier-class Wi-Fi addresses the needs of both of these markets.

Stadium and sports deployments probably fall somewhere in the middle of those markets, since many such deals are being done as partnerships between enterprises (teams) and carriers. But the good news for vendors like Ruckus is, there’s no getting away from the need for Wi-Fi. And the gear needs to be better than earlier technology to handle the needs of big events.

Qualcomm Stadium Gets AT&T DAS; N.Carolina State, U of Kentucky also get upgrades

We’ve always found it more than a bit ironic that Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego, namesake of the chip giant, didn’t have any Wi-Fi to speak of and from what we heard, it had bad cell coverage too. That should change going forward at least a little bit thanks to a new DAS (Distributed Antenna System) deployment AT&T has installed at the home of the Chargers, which will bring AT&T’s new 4G LTE network to football fans in SoCal.

AT&T is also putting some cellular upgrades into college stadiums, including N.C. State’s Carter-Finley Stadium in Raleigh, N.C., which is getting some of the cool new multi-beam antennas. The University of Kentucky’s Commonwealth Stadium in Lexington, Ky., is also getting an upgrade via an AT&T DAS, so SEC fans should be able to get their mobile game on better while cheering on the Wildcats.

Filed Under: 4G LTE, AT&T, DAS, NFL, SEC, Wi-Fi Tagged With: AT&T 4G LTE, DAS, Mobile Sports Report, Paul Kapustka, Qualcomm Stadium, Ruckus Wireless

Wednesday Wi-Fi Whispers: New Networks for Bobcats, Patriots and Vols

September 12, 2012 by Paul Kapustka 3 Comments

Wi-Fi gear supplier Ruckus Wireless has racked up another stadium win, this time as the technology behind a new Wi-Fi network at Time Warner Cable Arena in Charlotte, N.C., home of the NBA’s Charlotte Bobcats.

The new network was live just in time to supply attendees at last week’s Democratic convention with a signal much stronger than cellular. According to a report by John Cox in Network World the new network uses Ruckus’s specially designed stadium antennas and uses the better-performing 802.11n Wi-Fi protocol. Doug Sabo, product manager for micronetworks at Time-Warner Cable, said the cable giant (which supplies Internet and video back-end services) is talking with “many of the venues in our service area” to gauge their needs or desires to install or upgrade their stadium Wi-Fi operations.

Patriots Expand Network, Pick Local Firm Enterasys for Wi-Fi Gear

Fans of the New England Patriots can now enjoy Wi-Fi access throughout Gillette Stadium, thanks to a new network put in place by the team and Enterasys Networks, an Andover, Mass., supplier of networking gear. This Boston Herald report details the new network, which will provide free Wi-Fi service to all fans at the Pats’ NFL games.

Previously, wireless gear supplier Xirrus had helped the Patriots bring Wi-Fi services to Gillette Stadium’s extensive luxury suites and clubs. No word yet on whether the Xirrus installation will remain, or whether the Enterasys deal will usher Xirrus out.

Tennessee Vols get DAS at Neyland Stadium

One of the most orange places on earth, the University of Tennessee’s Neyland Stadium, has a new Distributed Antenna System (DAS) installation in place to help improve cellular coverage. Raleigh, N.C.-based Longent is behind the installation, using DAS gear from Solid Technologies. Verizon Wireless will be the first cellular provider to use the DAS system, which improves cellular coverage by placing small antennas throughout the facility.

Filed Under: 4G LTE, DAS, NBA, NFL, Verizon Wireless, Wi-Fi Tagged With: Charlotte Bobcats, Enterasys, Mobile Sports Report, NBA, New England Patriots, NFL, Paul Kapustka, Ruckus Wireless, University of Tennessee

Ruckus will provide Wi-Fi for new MLS Earthquakes stadium in San Jose

Ruckus Scores Wi-Fi Deal for Soccer Stadiums in Brazil — But Will Wi-Fi be Missing in Action at Brazil’s 2014 World Cup?

Wi-Fi Whispers Bulletin: Cisco Buys Meraki for $1.2 Billion

Wednesday Wi-Fi Whispers: Ruckus Goes Narrow with New Directional Antenna

Wednesday Wi-Fi Whispers: Ruckus Files for IPO, Qualcomm Stadium Gets DAS

Wednesday Wi-Fi Whispers: New Networks for Bobcats, Patriots and Vols

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