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Stadium Tech Report: Miami Marlins rely on ExteNet DAS to keep wireless traffic flowing

June 14, 2014 by Paul Kapustka Leave a Comment

Marlins Park. Credit all photos: Miami Marlins.

If you know anything about Marlins Park, maybe it’s the stadium’s unique retractable roof or the spectacular art that catches your eye. But there’s also something you can’t see that is equally exciting, at least when it comes to the in-stadium connectivity experience: A neutral-host distributed antenna system (DAS) that has more than kept pace with the rapid, continual increase in fan cellular activity.

“When it came to DAS, we were ahead of the game,” said David Enriquez, senior director of information technology for the Miami Marlins, in a recent phone interview. Well before the 37,000-seat stadium opened in 2012, Enriquez said the Marlins’ IT team was researching and planning for enhanced cellular connectivity – even before “DAS” became a hot industry acronym.

“We planned for a DAS even before they were in vogue,” said Enriquez. “We saw it as a necessary evil.”

With the iPhone and all its cataclysmic changes already in motion, Enriquez said the Marlins wanted to avoid what had happened recently at another arena that opened in the Sunshine state without good connectivity.

“What we didn’t want to see was something like what happened in Orlando, when they opened the arena [in 2010], it had bad coverage, and they were crucified in the press for bad [cellular] service,” Enriquez said. “We said, what we’d love to have is the complete opposite of that.”

David Enriquez

At the opening of Marlins Park, the connectivity inside the walls was better than most, with a full-park Wi-Fi network using gear from Meru Networks and a neutral-host DAS deployed by integrator ExteNet Systems. And though Wi-Fi often gets the headlines when there is talk about stadium networks, in many facilities like Marlins Park, the DAS is an equal workhorse, since many fans still either don’t know how or don’t take the time to switch their devices over to Wi-Fi.

DAS is the workhorse

According to Enriquez, on an average night at the ballpark the Wi-Fi network will handle 40 percent of the wireless traffic, with the DAS taking care of the other 60 percent. That may be because of lack of knowledge, or perhaps satisfaction with the signal the DAS is giving them, Enriquez said.

“Early on, most people, honestly, did not know how to change [their phone] to Wi-Fi,” Enriquez said. Most fans, he added, weren’t typically streaming lots of video — they may, he said, have used the MLB At Bat app to look at a replay or two, but that could all be handled by DAS. “That trend is changing though and we are seeing much more video traffic, especially with the younger generation of guests,” Enriquez said.

Marlins Park outside

“The truth is, many users may not take the time to switch [to Wi-Fi],” Enriquez said. “If they’re getting 4 to 5 bars on their cellular signal, they’re happy.”

Though the Marlins and ExteNet now have five major carriers on their DAS – AT&T, Verizon Wireless, Sprint, T-Mobile and MetroPCS (now part of T-Mobile), Enriquez said there was a bit of the chicken and egg problem at the start.

“Early on, nobody wanted to be the first on (the neutral DAS),” Enriquez said. “ We [the stadium] were just another node. Now, 3 years later, we are a central node in the Miami area and all the carriers are here. We’re a very central location.”

Staying in neutral

Enriquez, who has considerable experience in the large-venue IT world, said that having a neutral host for the DAS eliminates any potential concerns about favoritism between service providers. Even though costs to the team or stadium may be lower if they allow a carrier to take over DAS deployment, Enriquez said that for the Marlins a neutral host was worth the extra price.

“We didn’t want an advantage to be held by one carrier,” Enriquez said. Even if a carrier says it will act as a neutral host, when one carrier owns the deployment, others can “find it hard to believe there will be an equal time slice” when it comes to antenna access.

“We just wanted to avoid that, and make it irrelevant [as a concern],” Enriquez said.

The choice of bringing in an integrator like ExteNet, he said, provides an additional streamlining of operations, as there is now a single point for vendors to interact with to work out technology and deployment issues.

“We wanted to deal with one vendor – I didn’t want to be the middleman between the carriers and the Marlins,” Enriquez said. In that regard, he said, ExteNet has been “wonderful” as a neutral host. “They deal with all the carrier issues that I have no desire to deal with,” Enriquez said.

Less space needed for DAS upgrades

And even as fan cellular bandwidth use continues to grow – requiring carriers to constantly upgrade their systems – Enriquez said that DAS infrastructure is benefiting from improved technology to the point where even as carriers upgrade, their head end footprint is shrinking.

AT&T, for instance, has upgraded its DAS presence in Marlins Park four times over the past 2 years, Enriquez said, to the point where the carrier now has coverage for all four frequency bands. “They [AT&T] have done quite a bit to expand their coverage,” Enriquez said.

Still, the Marlins Park DAS head end hasn’t had to find new space beyond its original 1,500-square foot enclosure.

“Every time someone comes in to replace gear, we have a smaller [DAS] footprint,” Enriquez said. “It’s not going to eat you out of house and home anymore.”

Like other stadium IT directors, Enriquez is still surprised by the amount of wireless traffic generated by the fans who come to the games. “It’s incredible to see the need [for bandwidth” grow,” he said. “But people continue to give our network a thumbs up, we see that in our guest comments all the time. I just don’t know what we would do without the DAS.”

Filed Under: 4G LTE, AT&T, Baseball, DAS, Major League Baseball, MSR Guides, T-Mobile, Verizon Wireless, Wi-Fi Tagged With: 4G LTE, At Bat, AT&T, DAS, Miami Marlins, MLB, Mobile Sports Report, Paul Kapustka, Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon Wireless

AT&T Park gets more Wi-Fi, new DAS backend, and iBeacon… plus seat upgrade app

March 28, 2014 by Paul Kapustka Leave a Comment

Generally recognized as perhaps the best-connected sports stadium anywhere, AT&T Park in San Francisco will greet fans for the 2014 baseball season with upgrades to make the technology experience even better than before, with upgraded Wi-Fi and DAS, as well as Apple’s new iBeacon technology.

In a press release sent out earlier this week the Giants said that they and partner AT&T had been busy this offseason adding upgrades to the Wi-Fi network that has hosted more than 1.85 million visitors since it first went online in 2004. According to the Giants the park now has 1,289 access points for its free Wi-Fi service, second in number only to the Dallas Cowboys’ home, cavernous AT&T Stadium in Dallas.

On the DAS side of things AT&T Park now has a completely new headend system that fully supports both AT&T and Verizon versions of 4G LTE signals. According to the release T-Mobile and Sprint services will join the DAS later this year.

Like many other MLB parks the Giants’ home will now feature Apple’s iBeacon technology, which is basically low-power Bluetooth connections that can communicate with nearby Apple iOS7 devices. Though phones may now run out of juice quicker at the park if you need to leave both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth on, it should be interesting to see how fans respond to the iBeacon deployments, whether they find them helpful or annoying. MSR will keep following the iBeacon deployments through the year, and we encourage any and all fans who use the system to tell us how it worked.

This year the Giants will also be working in partnership with the Pogoseat app for instant at-the-game ticket upgrades. The feature will be available in the Giants version of MLB’s At the Ballpark app, where Giants fans will be able to search for better seats to pay for while at the park. Of course you can always try the time-honored method of just sneaking into empty seats in later innings of the game, but there is no app for that.

Filed Under: 4G LTE, Apple, AT&T, Baseball, DAS, iOS 7, Major League Baseball, Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon Wireless, Wi-Fi Tagged With: Apple, At the Ballpark, AT&T, AT&T Park, DAS, iBeacon, MLBAM, Mobile Sports Report, Paul Kapustka, Pogoseat, San Francisco Giants, Sprint, Stadium Wi-Fi, T-Mobile, Verizon Wireless

Artemis Networks adding stadium Wi-Fi market to its targets

March 20, 2014 by Paul Kapustka 3 Comments

When Artemis Networks came out of nowhere a month ago, we speculated that if their new wireless technology worked as advertised it could bring a “welcome revolution to stadium wireless networking.” Apparently, lots of stadium folks thought the same exact thing. And they’ve kept the Artemis office phone ringing off the hook ever since.

Though stadiums weren’t part of Artemis’ original plan, after a month of fielding calls from and taking meetings with multiple interested stadium owners and operators, company CEO Steve Perlman said his small crew is now busy working to also make its gear work with Wi-Fi, to better answer the growing need for connectivity inside large public venues.

pCell antenna from Artemis Networking

In an in-person interview earlier this week with Perlman at the Rearden Companies facility in downtown San Francisco, Perlman said he and the Artemis crew “had no idea” that the stadium networking market even really existed, or that it would be so very interested in something that could possibly ease a lot of their connectivity pains.

“It came down on us like a ton of bricks,” said Perlman of the outpouring of demand from venue representatives. And while Perlman prides himself in having his team “solve the hard problem first” of getting its new technology to work with cellular LTE signals, the request for a Wi-Fi version from stadim operators and owners — available preferably yesterday — has the Artemis team working hard to add Wi-Fi support to its product’s repertoire.

Solving for congestion and interference

If you’re unfamiliar with the Artemis idea, at its simplest level it’s a new idea in connecting wireless devices to antennas that — if it works as advertised — turns conventional cellular and Wi-Fi thinking on its head. What Perlman and Artemis claim is that they have developed a way to build radios that transmit signals “that deliberately interfere with each other” to establish a “personal cell,” or pCell, for each device connecting to the network.

(See this BusinessWeek story from 2011 that thoroughly explains the Artemis premise in detail. This EE Times article also has more details, and this Wired article is also a helpful read.)

Leaving the complicated math and physics to the side for now, if Artemis’ claims hold true their technology could solve two of the biggest problems in wireless networking, namely bandwidth congestion and antenna interference. In current cellular and Wi-Fi designs, devices share signals from antenna radios, meaning bandwidth is reduced as more people connect to a cellular antenna or a Wi-Fi access point. Adding more antennas is one way to solve congestion problems; but especially in stadiums and other large public venues, you can’t place antennas too close to each other, because of signal interference.

The Artemis pCell technology, Perlman said, trumps both problems by delivering a centimeter-sized cell of coverage to each device, which can follow the device as it moves around in an antenna’s coverage zone. Again, if the company’s claims hold true of being able to deliver full bandwidth to each device “no matter how many users” are connected to each antenna, stadium networks could theoretically support much higher levels of connectivity at possibly a fraction of the current cost.

Add to that the fact that Artemis isn’t just a technology theory, but instead something far closer to a finished product, and you can understand the stadium network crowd’s desire to learn more. What makes pCell technology especially appealing is the fact that it supports existing phone and wireless device technology, so users don’t need new devices. Stadiums and arenas would need to install pCell antennas and back-end computing gear, but Perlman also noted that pCell technology could exist alongside current Wi-Fi and DAS implementations, with handoffs to either one. That means a stadium could deploy pCell as an add-on technology to help fill in coverage gaps and not as a rip-and-replace, a try-it type business situation which could make Artemis even more appealing to the large-venue market.

First-hand knowledge of the problem

Though it was the solving for the increase in overall mobile data use that helped push former QuickTime developer and WebTV entrepreneur Perlman and his team through the more than 10 years it took them to develop pCell, Perlman said he should have figured out the stadium issue after his own experience this past football season.

Perlman, who attended the Rose Bowl game between Stanford and Michigan State on New Year’s Day, told a story about his brother going to get some food from the concession stand early in the contest. After his brother left the seats, Perlman decided he wanted some french fries to be added to the order, so he sent his brother a text message with instructions to add fries to the shopping list.

“He came back with the food but in the heat of the game I forgot all about the fries, which he didn’t get,” Perlman said. The reason why? Perlman’s text message didn’t reach his brother’s phone until 45 minutes after it was sent — an experience still too common at many stadiums these days.

While Perlman expects Artemis to provide some of its initial products to cellular service providers later this year, the demand to solve stadium networking problems may end up pushing Artemis more quickly into the arena business, assuming it can modify its gear to work with Wi-Fi, along with LTE, signals. While the company has some doubters — perhaps normal for any new technology with such far-out claims — at the very least it has the confident, previously successful Perlman at its helm, and an incredibly impressive set of demonstrations of its technology available for interested parties.

Whether or not those demonstrations become part of working, production networks is the next step ahead of Perlman and his crew, a path you can be sure we will be watching closely. Along with many of our readers in the stadium networking marketplace, we are sure.

Filed Under: 4G LTE, AT&T, DAS, iPhone, Wi-Fi Tagged With: 4G LTE, Artemis Networks, AT&T, DAS, Mobile Sports Report, Paul Kapustka, Rearden, Stadium Wi-Fi, Steve Perlman, T-Mobile, Verizon Wireless

Stadium Tech Report: Verizon, AT&T DAS upgrades at MetLife Stadium await Super Bowl Sunday

January 27, 2014 by Paul Kapustka 7 Comments

Verizon branded gate at MetLife Stadium. Credit: Verizon Wireless

Super Bowl foes the Seattle Seahawks and the Denver Broncos have only had two weeks to prepare for each other. But Verizon Wireless and AT&T have been preparing for the roman-numeral date at MetLife Stadium for more than a year. Will the Verizon Wi-Fi and DAS, and AT&T’s separate DAS be able to handle the wireless needs of the fans at the NFL’s biggest game? Tune in Sunday to see!

We might be one of the only news outlets who care more about the wireless networking at Super Bowls than the game itself, but for many in the stadium tech industry the biggest single game in America’s most popular sport is always somewhat of a wireless watershed. Perhaps at no other event do attendees spend so much time shooting selfies and posting them as they do from the site of Super Bowl Sunday. Even in the expected cold, it should be no different this week at Super Bowl XLVIII at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, where game time is scheduled for around 6:30 p.m. Eastern.

But well before that, fans will be testing the Verizon-built Wi-Fi network and both of the big carriers’ DAS deployments inside MetLife. According to reps from both companies that we spoke with last week, the carriers are ready.

Verizon spokesman David Samberg told us via email last week that an upgrade of the Verizon DAS in MetLife this past season means there are now more than 500 DAS antennas inside the facility. See some of the photos provided by Verizon that show the clever hiding spots Verizon engineers have found over the last 18 months as they’ve added capacity to a network built just a few years ago.

AT&T has also put in a brand-new DAS over the past year, with another 500-plus antennas of its own. “For the last year or so we’ve been working on our pre-game and game day network playbook in an effort to provide the best possible wireless experience for our customers,” said Michael Maus, assistant vice president of network services at AT&T, via email. “In anticipation of the huge volume of data and voice usage expected [for the Super Bowl], we’ve built a new state of the art antenna system inside the stadium, we’re rolling in portable cell sites both at the stadium, and to support the tailgate areas, and we’ve augmented coverage in New York City to support the activities there.”

Rooftop DAS equipment. Credit: Verizon Wireless

For Verizon’s own customers, 4G LTE capacity at MetLife has been quadrupled since last year, according to Samberg, who said that all stadium upgrades were completed by October, giving Verizon multiple chances to test its system against crowds at New York Giants and New York Jets home games. So far, Samberg said, so good.

More traffic than last year’s Super Bowl already

While yours truly opined earlier this year that this year’s Super Bowl might not set a wireless traffic record, we didn’t take into account some simple numbers — mainly, that MetLife Stadium’s official capacity of 82,566 is bigger than the Superdome’s 72,003. So, even if it’s cold, having 10,000 more people on hand probably means more bandwidth consumed, even if this year’s game doesn’t have a power blackout in the second half. (And even if it does, Samberg said the network shouldn’t go down since Verizon has backup power supplies on hand.)

Find the DAS antenna! Credit: Verizon Wireless

Our only problem with record wireless numbers from Sunday’s game is that we probably won’t ever see an actual number, since Verizon historically shies away from providing a score. Instead it just issues press releases saying things like “way more traffic this year than last!” and then expects us all to believe that without numbers. The good news for fans at the game is that the in-stadium Wi-Fi network, also built by Verizon, is free and open to customers of all carriers, or basically anyone with a device that has a Wi-Fi chip. But Verizon, like big competitor AT&T, has been beefing up its DAS installations significantly because most people try cellular first, even at stadiums, before instructing their phones to find a Wi-Fi network. AT&T, to its credit, usually does deliver a wireless scorecard quickly after big events. So at least from AT&T’s perspective we should find out if this year’s game sets another record.

Aside from the stadium improvements, Verizon will be showing a demonstration of a technology this week that could make DAS more of a competitor to Wi-Fi on the high bandwidth side of things. Called LTE multicast, the technology basically establishes set channels for LTE devices that will “broadcast” video, like a TV channel. (This idea is similar to the StadiumVision Mobile technology Cisco uses at stadiums like Barclays Center.) Theoretically, LTE multicast could let fans use a cellular connection to view multiple video streams, something you would need to use Wi-Fi for it to have any chance of working. But the multicast demo won’t take place at MetLife, but instead at Bryant Park in Manhattan this week. If you are in the city, check out the demo and let us know what you think.

No NFL Mobile at MetLife

And here’s something else you won’t be able to use at MetLife during the Super Bowl: Verizon’s own NFL Mobile app, which outside the stadium will be the only smartphone platform you’ll be able to watch the game on. (The Fox streaming site and app will only work with tablets and desktops or laptops, per the league’s rights agreement with Verizon.) Next year, the rights for NFL Mobile will change and if the local game (like, say, the Super Bowl) is on TV, you’ll be able to use NFL Mobile to watch it even if you’re at the stadium. But not this year! (To give one answer as to why, if you are at the game, you might want to watch it on your cell phone, we say: Bathroom or beer lines!)

More stadium infrastructure photos below:

AT&T DAS antennas at MetLife. Credit: AT&T

AT&T’s new head-end building at MetLife, where its DAS gear is housed. Credit: AT&T

Inside the AT&T head-end building at MetLife. Cables! Credit: AT&T

Filed Under: 4G LTE, AT&T, Cisco, DAS, Denver Broncos, Fox Sports, iPad, iPhone, Live sports via mobile, MSR Guides, NFL, NFL Mobile, Seattle Seahwaks, Super Bowl, Verizon Wireless, Wi-Fi Tagged With: AT&T, DAS, Denver Broncos, Lucas Oil Stadium, MetLife Stadium, Mobile Sports Report, New Orleans Superdome, NFL Mobile, Paul Kapustka, Seattle Seahawks, stadium cellular, stadium DAS, Stadium Wi-Fi, Super Bowl, Super Bowl wireless traffic, Super Bowl XLVIII, T-Mobile, Verizon Wireless

‘Big Four’ wireless carriers sign on to use DAS at Niners’ Levi’s Stadium

January 7, 2014 by Paul Kapustka 1 Comment

Whenever you are putting a neutral DAS in a stadium, one of the biggest challenges is convincing the major cellular carriers to participate in your deployment. Even before their new arena has opened, the San Francisco 49ers have scored a victory of sorts with the news that the four biggest U.S. cellular carriers — AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile — have all agreed to use the neutral-hosted DAS at Levi’s Stadium.

According to DAS Group Professionals, who are behind the DAS deployment at Levi’s, the system of small cellular antennas will also be synchronized with the stadium’s Wi-Fi coverage to produce “seamless” coverage for fans. Though we are historically wary of promises made before networks go live, the fact that the big players in U.S. cellular all agreed to use the neutral DAS shows at least in some way that the folks putting together the technology at Levi’s have a convincing story.

We’ll have more from DGP and the Levi’s DAS deployment at some point in the future, so stay tuned for the stadium launch that has everyone in the stadium tech marketplace watching and waiting.

Filed Under: 4G LTE, AT&T, DAS, NFL, Sprint, T-Mobile, Wi-Fi Tagged With: AT&T, DAS, DAS Group Professionals, Levi's Stadium, Mobile Sports Report, Paul Kapustka, San Francisco 49ers, Stadium Wi-Fi, T-Mobile, Verizon

ExteNet Systems Scores Miami DAS Deal, Becoming a Player in Stadium Network Market

April 23, 2012 by Paul Kapustka 7 Comments

When it comes to in-stadium wireless networks, it turns out that teams and wireless providers aren’t the only players in the game. ExteNet Systems, a Lisle, Ill. startup, is rapidly scoring points by playing the “middleman” role, building out stadium networks at no cost to teams and making money by renting network access to the carriers.

Last week ExteNet announced it was the builder of the new Distributed Antenna System (DAS) installation at the new Marlins Park in Miami, with Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile USA already signed up as customers. And it turns out that ExteNet was also behind Verizon’s DAS deployment in and around Lucas Oil Stadium for the recent Super Bowl XLVI. Those deployments are just part of a new stadium-business push from ExteNet, which also put in a DAS system at the “Big House,” the huge bowl stadium at the University of Michigan, last fall.

Though ExteNet also provides in-building networks to some more traditional markets — like health care and hospitality, where large groups of people are seeking network access inside a confined space — it’s looking to add more stadium customers in the near future. According to CEO Ross Manire, a veteran of the networking industry, the boom in powerful handheld devices has created a “perfect storm” of capacity consumption that can’t be addressed by the historical cellular antenna architectures.

“You used to just worry about voice coverage,” said Manire in a phone interview last week. “But phones are really data terminals now, and the question becomes how do you manage strain on networks [at stadiums]. “In the past you may have been able to get a voice signal from a cell tower several blocks away. That doesn’t work now.”

The privately held ExteNet, which received a $128.4 million funding round at the start of 2010, thinks it can help both carriers and venue owners by providing “middleman” network services. The basic business model, Manire said, has ExteNet building and owning the stadium network, which it deploys at no cost to the team or building owners. It then charges carriers a “node activation fee,” a sort of monthly rent to let their services ride on the network.

If you’re not familar with how a DAS works, it’s essentialy a bunch of small cellular antennas that are mounted on ceilings and walls inside buildings, instead of on huge towers like traditional cellular antennas. A DAS network administrator provides normal cellular connectivity to users, and then connects those signals to the appropriate cellular vendor on the network’s back end. DAS deployments can also add Wi-Fi antennas to their infrastructure mix. ExteNet, like many DAS operators, can connect its back end to any number of cellular networks, meaning that fans don’t have to be a customer of a certain provider to get better in-stadium service.

The openness of ExteNet’s design may make it a better choice for stadium operators than an internal network designed and owned by a single carrier, since fans wouldn’t have to be customers of a specific carrier to get better service. ExteNet runs a network operations center 24/7 to provide support to all its networks, and signs a service level agreement (SLA) with both the stadium owner and its cellular partners to give both parties what they really want — happier customers.

“We’re seeing an incredible amount of attention from stadium and team owners, who need to provide a good [wireless] experience,” Manire said. “Fans believe they should be able to connect wherever they go. Of course that’s easier said than done.”

But now ExteNet may be part of making that connectivity a reality for more fans, going forward.

Filed Under: 4G LTE, AT&T, Cisco, DAS, Super Bowl, Wi-Fi Tagged With: DAS, ExteNet, Marlins Stadium, T-Mobile, Verizon Wireless