University of Phoenix Stadium

Arizona Cardinals’ University of Phoenix Stadium beefs up Wi-Fi and DAS ahead of College Football Playoff championship game

November 13, 2015 by Paul Kapustka Leave a Comment

University of Phoenix Stadium before Super Bowl XLIX. Photo: Paul Kapustka, MSR (click on any photo for a larger image)

After just hosting a Super Bowl, one with record wireless traffic numbers, you might not think that the University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale, Ariz., needed to upgrade its Wi-Fi and DAS networks. But with many more big events on the way soon, including hosting this season’s College Football Playoff championship game, the UoP Stadium isn’t sitting still, but instead is fine-tuning and expanding its networks to ensure fans stay connected as well as possible.

According to Mark Feller, vice president of technology for the Arizona Cardinals, more Wi-Fi has been added to the stadium networks for this football season, including lawn areas just outside the stadium and the Pat Tillman Plaza area on the north side of the stadium. For the Super Bowl last year the venue had extensive DAS coverage outside from a Crown Castle deployment, but in an email message Feller said adding Wi-Fi to the mix was always part of the plan. Here’s Mark:

“Our plan from the start was to have Wi-Fi outdoors for our fans to use and we are rolling it out as time allows. We have such good weather that there are thousands of people tailgating on game days. In addition, the Cardinals Mobile App (from Yinzcam) provides live Stadium Feeds, Replays, and the Red Zone Channel so our fans can keep up with the early games while they are outside.”

Outside UoP Stadium, where the architecture allows for DAS antenna placement under the fascia as well as behind speaker covers.

Inside the stadium, Feller said there are now Gimbal beacons deployed for “selective messaging” alerts that are tied to the stadium app. The team also added a separate Verizon Wireless SSID to its Wi-Fi mix, giving Verizon customers reserved bandwidth as well as the ability to autoconnect. The Wi-Fi network uses Cisco gear and is managed and supported by CDW. At the Cardinals’ most recent home game, a 26-18 win over the Baltimore Ravens on Oct. 26, the Wi-Fi network carried 1.445 terabytes of data, with 22,502 unique connections, according to numbers provided by Feller. Out of the 63,500-seat stadium a maximum number of 19,559 concurrent users was seen that day, with the top sites connected to by fans being Apple, Facebook, Google, iCloud, Yahoo, Instagram, Twitter and ESPN, according to Feller.

Getting ready for the playoff championship

For both the biggest college game of the year (scheduled for Jan. 11, 2016) which like last year should be a big network event, as well as a host of other “big events,” like a U.S. Women’s soccer team game vs. China on Dec. 13 and the Fiesta Bowl on New Year’s Day, Feller said the UoP stadium team is continuing to expand the Crown Castle DAS as well, with more sectors in the stadium’s Club and Loft sections, as well as more coverage outside on the lawns. Portable Wi-Fi is also an option, Feller said, as the stadium adds temporary seating to expand for the big game of the collegiate season:

“Having the Super Bowl here did give us some ideas about increasing density in some areas where we put temporary seating. We tested some different WiFi portable enclosure systems that we could put up and take down quickly and figured out how to get cabling to them quickly as well. That will help us get set up for the CFP Championship.”

Filed Under: 4G LTE, Apps, AT&T, Cisco, DAS, ESPN, Facebook, Google, NCAA Football, NFL, NFL Network, Verizon Wireless, Wi-Fi Tagged With: 4G LTE, Apps, Arizona Cardinals, AT&T, College Football Playoff championship, DAS, ESPN, Facebook, Google, Mobile Sports Report, NFL, Paul Kapustka, Stadium Wi-Fi, Super Bowl, University of Phoenix Stadium, Wi-Fi

AT&T Stadium, Levi’s Stadium tops for stadium Wi-Fi usage

July 8, 2015 by Paul Kapustka 2 Comments

Niners’ Flickr promotion on scoreboard at Levi’s Stadium. Photo: Paul Kapustka, MSR

There’s no competition and no wagering, but if you wanted to find the sports stadium that handles the most Wi-Fi traffic, two of your top finalists would no doubt be Levi’s Stadium and AT&T Stadium, which both recently released some season-long Wi-Fi statistics to Mobile Sports Report, including year-long totals in excess of 40 terabytes for Levi’s Stadium and 50+ TB for AT&T Stadium.

Levi’s Stadium, the brand-new home of the San Francisco 49ers located in Santa Clara, Calif., has carried more than 45 TB of traffic on its Wi-Fi network through 20 events, according to Chuck Lukaszewski, very high density architect in the CTO Office of Aruba Networks, an HP Company (Aruba is the Wi-Fi gear suppler to Levi’s Stadium). During those events — 10 of which were NFL games, the other 10 a list including college games, concerts, a hockey game and a wrestling event — the Levi’s Stadium network saw approximately 415,000 unique users, Lukaszewski said.

Down in Texas, the home of the Dallas Cowboys reported some similar Wi-Fi statistics, with a total tonnage mark of 42.87 TB across 11 NFL games and six college games, according to John Winborn, chief information officer for the Dallas Cowboys Football Club. During those games the AT&T Stadium Wi-Fi network saw more than 500,000 unique connections, Winborn said. Winborn also said that AT&T Stadium saw almost an additional 10 TB in usage from concerts and from hosting the NCAA’s Final Four in 2014, pushing the venue’s Wi-Fi usage mark to 52.17 TB. “This [total] does not include our dirt events (Supercross, Monster Trucks, Rodeos) and other full stadium events that would give us an even higher number,” Winborn added in an email to MSR.

AT&T Stadium at College Football Playoff championship game. Photo: Paul Kapustka, MSR

For comparison, for football games Levi’s Stadium has a normal capacity of 68,500, with additional seating available (including on-field seats for concerts and other events) that can bring capacity to nearly 80,000. AT&T Stadium has a listed football capacity of 85,000, but that number can also be expanded with standing-room only numbers; according to Wikipedia AT&T Stadium had a record 105,121 fans in attendance for a Cowboys football game on Sept. 21, 2009, and had 108,713 fans in the stadium for the NBA All-Star game on Feb. 14, 2010.

Single-day connections for both pass Super Bowl marks

And while the most recent Super Bowl at the University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale, Ariz., still holds what we believe to be the highest single-game data mark for Wi-Fi traffic at 6.2 TB, both Levi’s Stadium and AT&T Stadium have had events with Wi-Fi usage totals exceeding 4 TB, with March’s WrestleMania 31 hitting 4.5 TB at Levi’s Stadium and the January College Football Playoff championship game recording 4.93 TB of traffic at AT&T Stadium.

Scoreboard promo for the Levi’s Wi-Fi network

Both AT&T Stadium and Levi’s Stadium surpassed the Super Bowl when it came to high-water marks for single-game connected user totals; somewhat ironically, AT&T Stadium set what is probably the highest-ever Wi-Fi connection total of 38,534 unique users (out of 91,174 in attendance) during last season’s home opener against the visiting 49ers. According to Winborn, the total was reached “largely due to heavy in-game promotion around the Wi-Fi upgrades and new stadium app.”

At Levi’s Stadium, the season home opener against the Chicago Bears saw 29,429 unique users on the Wi-Fi network, which was more than the 25,936 unique devices connected to the network at Super Bowl XLIX in Arizona. Levi’s Stadium also saw the highest number of concurrently connected users, 18,900, at the Bears game, compared to a high of 17,322 at the Super Bowl. At AT&T Stadium, Winborn said the season high for concurrently connected users was 27,523, recorded during the Cowboys’ home playoff game against the Detroit Lions.

Looking ahead to Super Bowl 50

According to Aruba’s Lukaszewski, the Wi-Fi network at Levi’s Stadium “did what it was supposed to do” last season, carrying high loads of wireless traffic. One stat the Levi’s team invented for its own network was “amount of time the network spent carrying more than 1 Gbps” — a total that Lukaszewski said reached 21 hours and 30 minutes across the 10 NFL events, and 31 hours 40 minutes across all 20 events.

For the upcoming football season and the hosting of Super Bowl 50 next February, the Levi’s Stadium Wi-Fi network will get some strategic Wi-Fi AP upgrades, specifically along some of the concourse areas where groups of standing fans had effectively blocked signals from under-the-seat APs near the tops of seating rows. Lukaszewski said the stadium team would add additional APs in areas where fans are spending time standing, as well as in concourse and plaza bar areas, where some structures were added during the season. Levi’s Stadium is also planning to deploy temporary under-the-seat APs when additional bleacher seats are added for the Super Bowl, Lukaszewski said.

Filed Under: 4G LTE, Apps, Cisco, Dallas Cowboys, DAS, Levi's Stadium, NFL, Wi-Fi Tagged With: AT&T Stadium, Dallas Cowboys, DAS, Levi's Stadium, Mobile Sports Report, NFL, Paul Kapustka, San Francisco 49ers, Stadium Wi-Fi, Super Bowl, Super Bowl 50, Super Bowl XLIX, University of Phoenix Stadium, Wi-Fi

Super Bowl XLIX sets new stadium Wi-Fi record with 6.2 Terabytes of data consumed

February 4, 2015 by Paul Kapustka Leave a Comment

University of Phoenix Stadium. Credit: Arizona Cardinals.

The Super Bowl is once again the stadium Wi-Fi champ, as fans at Sunday’s Super Bowl XLIX in Glendale, Ariz., used 6.23 terabytes of data during the contest, according to the team running the network at the University of Phoenix Stadium.

The 6.23 TB mark blew past the most recent entrant in the “most Wi-Fi used at a single-day single-stadium event” sweepstakes, the 4.93 TB used at the Jan. 12 College Football Playoff championship game at AT&T Stadium. Prior to that, pro football games this past season at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif., and at AT&T Stadium had pushed into the 3-plus TB mark to be among the highest totals ever reported.

The live crowd watching the New England Patriots’ 28-24 victory over the Seattle Seahawks also used about as much cellular data as well, with Verizon Wireless, AT&T and Sprint claiming a combined total of 6.56 TB used in and around the stadium on game day. All three carriers were on the in-stadium and outside-the-stadium DAS deployments being run by neutral host Crown Castle. If those figures are correct (more on this later) it would put the total wireless data usage for the event at 12.79 TB, far and away the biggest single day of wireless data use we’ve ever heard of.

Apple OS updates still the application king

Handrails with Wi-Fi antenna enclosures from AmpThink. Credit: Arizona Cardinals.

Mark Feller, vice president of information technology for the Arizona Cardinals, and Travis Bugh, senior wireless consultant for CDW, provided Mobile Sports Report with the final Wi-Fi usage numbers, which are pretty stunning for anyone in the stadium networking profession. According to Feller the new CDW-deployed Wi-Fi network with Cisco gear at the UoP Stadium saw 2.499 TB of data downloaded, and 3.714 TB uploaded, for a total of 6.213 TB of Wi-Fi usage. Bugh of CDW said there were 25,936 unique devices connecting to the network on game day, with a peak concurrent usage of 17,322, recorded not surprisingly at halftime.

Peak download usage of 1.3 Gbps was recorded before the game’s start, while peak upload usage of 2.5 Gbps was hit at halftime. The top applications by bandwidth use, Feller said, were Apple (mobile update), Facebook, Dropbox and Snapchat.

DAS numbers also set new record, but clarification needed

The only reason we aren’t yet trumpeting the 6.564 TB of reported DAS use as a verified record is due to the differences in clarity from each of the reporting providers. We also haven’t yet heard any usage totals from T-Mobile, so it’s likely that the final final wireless data use number is somewhere north of 13 TB, if all can be believed.

Parking lot light poles, Westgate entertainment district. Can you spot the DAS?

As reported before, AT&T said it saw 1.7 TB of cellular wireless activity from its customers on game day, with 696 GB of that happening inside the stadium, and the balance coming from the outside areas before and after the game. We’d also like to welcome Sprint to the big-game reporting crew (thanks Sprint!), with its total of 754 GB of all 4G LTE traffic used in and around the stadium on game day. According to Sprint representatives, its Super Bowl coverage efforts included 5 COWs (cell towers on wheels) as well as expanded DAS and macro placements in various Phoenix-area locations. The Sprint coverage included the 2.5 GHz spectrum that uses TDD LTE technology.

As also previously reported, Verizon Wireless claimed 4.1 TB of customer traffic in and around the stadium on game day, which Verizon claims is all cellular traffic and does not reflect any Verizon Wireless customer use of the stadium Wi-Fi network. Verizon also reported some other interesting activity tidbits, which included 46,772 Verizon Wireless devices used at the game, of which just 59.7 percent were smartphones. Verizon also said it saw 10 million emails sent on its networks that day, and 1.9 million websites visited, while also seeing 122.308 videos sent or received over wireless connections.

We’re still waiting to see if we can get usage numbers from the Super Bowl stadium app (we’re especially interested to see if the instant replay feature caught on) but the warning for stadium owners and operators everywhere seems to be clear: If you’re hosting the big game (or any BIG game), make sure your network is ready for 6 TB and beyond!

Filed Under: 4G LTE, Apple, AT&T, Cisco, DAS, iPhone, MSR Guides, NFL, Seattle Seahwaks, Sprint, Super Bowl, Verizon Wireless, Wi-Fi Tagged With: AT&T, COWs, DAS, Dropbox, Mobile Sports Report, New England Patriots, Paul Kapustka, Seattle Seahawks, SnapChat, Sprint, Stadium Wi-Fi, Super Bowl, Super Bowl XLIX, University of Phoenix Stadium, Verizon Wireless, Wi-Fi

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

February 2, 2015 by Paul Kapustka Leave a Comment

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 Leave a Comment

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

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

January 27, 2015 by Paul Kapustka 2 Comments

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