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Stadium Tech Report: Aruba, AT&T team up to bring Wi-Fi to American Airlines Center

March 13, 2014 by

Inside the bowl at American Airlines Center

Inside the bowl at American Airlines Center

After famously voicing his opinion that it just wasn’t needed, Mark Cuban, the outspoken owner of the Dallas Mavericks, at least now grudingly agrees that stadium Wi-Fi is a must-have amenity for NBA arenas.

Last week his team’s home facility, the American Airlines Center in Dallas, formally took the wraps off a powerful new Wi-Fi network. Built by AT&T using 315 access points from wireless gear provider Aruba Networks, the new American Airlines Center network should be at the top of league-arena networks, even if the Mavs’ owner won’t be using it that much. But as he said (in the wake of a SXSW panel last week that was talking about Wi-Fi in stadiums), Cuban isn’t against Wi-Fi anymore. He just thinks you should do more on the floor so that fans aren’t watching their phones.

While Cuban’s points about wanting to keep fans engaged with the game instead of looking down at their phones are well-taken, the reality of an always-connected world is that good connectivity is always in demand, especially at sporting events where fans may seek to use breaks to stay in touch with their digital worlds. And while the 21,000-seat American Airlines Center has had DAS installations for improved cellular, a robust Wi-Fi network allows for greater levels of connectivity, as well as potential future applications that might produce a better fan experience as well as more revenue.

“At some point, you just can’t live without it,” said Lori Glasser-Seinera, vice president of corporate sponsorships at American Airlines Center, in a recent phone interview. Cuban, she agreed, was correct in trying to prioritize the fan experience, but even he now agrees that Wi-Fi needs to be part of the stadium amenities. Joe Heinlein, IT Director for the arena, said that for many fans not having connectivity could be a reason to justify staying home.

“We need to make sure we fill our seats, and not fill the couch,” Heinlein said, in the same phone interview. A good network, he said, is one way of ensuring that fans don’t have a reason to stay home.

Moving from back office to fan-facing

Though the fan-facing Wi-Fi network (which AT&T makes available for free to all attendees) is new, there has been an Aruba-based network in the facility for more than several years. According to Heinlein, the network vendor approached the arena in 2005 “with an incredible offer” to put in a Wi-Fi network for back of the house business operations.

“We’ve used it for internal operations, for the press, and in meeting rooms,” said Heinlein of the 40-AP network that went unseen by fans of the Mavs and the NHL’s Dallas Stars, who also share the building. (American Airlines Center is owned by the city of Dallas, which leases it to the Stars and Mavs.) But 2 years ago, Heinlein said the arena started talking about how to put fan-facing Wi-Fi into the facility, a discussion that involved Dallas-based AT&T, a longtime sponsor for the arena.

“Since Aruba had been a longtime partner of ours we requested that AT&T include them in the deployment,” Glasser-Seinera said. The final result is the new Wi-Fi network announced last week, one where AT&T will use advanced Wi-Fi technology to automatically log in AT&T customers. Other carriers’ customers can also use the network, after logging in through a separate process. Heinlein said the network was a joint project between the arena and partners including AT&T, and as such did not divulge the total costs of building the new network.

Aruba gear helps overcome changing network needs

With more than 200 events during a calendar year, American Airlines Center is a constantly changing venue (think circuses, and concerts), especially when it comes to network coverage. Heinlein said specific challenges to connectivity include the large open space in the center of the arena, as well as the need to extend coverage deeper into the floor for basketball games.

“We have a big hole in the center of the arena, and there’s not a lot of places there to hang [antenna] assets,” Heinlein said. A “good portion” of the APs are located beneath seats, Heinlein said, along with some other ones that are located in vertical risers, which had holes bored into them for that purpose.

“It’s always a challenge to get a signal where you need it,” Heinlein said.

For basketball, the seating plan moves farther out onto the floor than for hockey games, a factor that often has the arena’s IT team being creative in deployment strategies, like putting access points on top of mobile tripods to provide extra coverage.

“The people sitting close to the court are very important customers,” Heinlein noted. “One of the reasons we went with Aruba is that their APs lend themselves to being able to make quick changes, and we use that capability.”

Looking to the future, with a network now in place

Cuban’s opinions about replays not working well on cellphones may keep the Mavs from being on the cutting edge when it comes to stadium apps. But that doesn’t mean the arena will be sitting still when it comes to utilizing its new resource. According to Heinlein and Glasser-Seinera, there are many potential new avenues to explore when it comes to using robust in-building connectivity. One such idea is using Wi-Fi as a GPS type system, to help attendees find resources inside the building more quickly. In the past, such applications could only be dreamed about. Now, they can be tested in the real world.

“Now that the system is in, we can test it and try different things,” Heinlein said. “Now that it’s here, we can explore what’s possible.”

Filed Under: AT&T, Basketball, DAS, MSR Guides, NBA, NHL, Wi-Fi Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Stadium Tech Report: Orlando Magic will use Wi-Fi to improve connections with fans

February 16, 2014 by

Amway Center prior to NBA opening night, 2013-14 season. Credit: Orlando Magic

Amway Center prior to NBA opening night, 2013-14 season. Credit: Orlando Magic

Here’s how fast things have moved in the world of sports fans using mobile devices: When the Orlando Magic’s Amway Center opened in 2010, it was considered a state of the art facility, with sustainable design and lots of creature comforts like bigger seats and 42-foot high main video screens on its center scoreboard. But for the new smartphones fans were starting to bring to games, there was no Wi-Fi network. So, like at many new arenas, the Amway Center tech team went back to the drawing board, to figure out how to best add the connectivity that is in demand at large public venues everywhere.

“When the Amway Center opened it was one of the most technically advanced buildings in the world,” said Jack Elkins, business innovations manager for the Orlando Magic, in a recent phone interview. Though the arena had Wi-Fi connectivity for luxury suites and for media, and a neutral-host DAS, there wasn’t a high-bandwith Wi-Fi network to service the balance of attendees at the 20,000-seat facility.

“At the time, public Wi-Fi for stadiums wasn’t [economically] viable,” Elkins said. But like smartphone design, Wi-Fi infrastructure equipment got cheaper, better and faster, and the arena team started making plans to deploy a network as quickly as possible, with an important caveat: They wanted to own the network themselves, to better take advantage of its ability to collect and share information with the fans who would be using it.

Amway Center outside shot. Credit: Amway Center

Amway Center outside shot. Credit: Amway Center

Owning your own Wi-Fi network

“We wanted to be one of the first teams [to put in Wi-Fi],” and by the 2012-13 season, the deployment was “financially palatable” to the building’s owner and operator, the central Florida city of Orlando. According to Elkins the Magic teamed with wireless infrastructure specialist AmpThink to help design and deploy the network, which the team wanted to own and operate instead of merely allowing a cellular carrier or another third party to run it.

“When we went to put in Wi-Fi we saw it as a capital investment — we wanted to own the network,” Elkins said. Jeff Lutes, vice president of technology for the Magic who also participated in the recent phone interview, said the team entered into a “unique relationship” with AmpThink, basically “giving them the arena as a testbed for new technology work.” What was the Magic’s overall goal? “Getting better analytics out of Wi-Fi,” Lutes said.

First came the difficult procedure of ripping into those brand new stadium walls to add technology, which included all the Wi-Fi access points and infrastructure.

“We had just opened this new and gorgeous building, and had to find ways to put up a Wi-Fi network incorporating antennas the size of 17-inch monitors in as an aesthetically pleasing way as possible,” said Elkins, expressing a frustration no doubt felt in many other existing facilities who are adding new stadium technology. “That was a very difficult thing for our venue.”

A strong partner means a deeper technical bench

On the technical side, the Magic’s tech team was able to rely on the bench strength of partners like AmpThink and Cisco, who made sure the deployment was forward-thinking enough to embrace the latest technologies, like the newer 5 GHz channels for Wi-Fi connectivity.

Orlando Magic in action at Amway Center. Credit: Orlando Magic

Orlando Magic in action at Amway Center. Credit: Orlando Magic

“The NBA is telling teams they’ll need to upgrade [networks] every 2 years but we won’t have to,” Elkins said. “Thanks to the foresight of Cisco and AmpThink, we have clients on both radios [2.4 GHz and 5 GHz] right now and as fans get newer devices they’ll be able to go to 5 GHz without us doing anything new.”

The fewer walls torn apart, the better.

“We had limited internal staff, many of whom needed to stay focused on day to day issues,” Elkins said. “AmpThink opened the door to keep us forward thinking.”

So far, Lutes said the Magic sees an average of about 2,700 fans using the Wi-Fi network during NBA games. Concerts usually see a higher use rate, something that also happens during “big” games — like when former Magic star Dwight Howard returned to Orlando a year ago while playing for the Los Angeles Lakers. According to Lutes, the network saw 4,000 users on the night Howard returned.

App rollout and future connectivity goes both ways

Part of the future of the team’s extended connectivity with fans is just getting underway, with the rollout of an official in-stadium app. And when fans access the network for the first time, they are presented with a registration page that gives the team the ability to fine tune its marketing and outreach messaging, a key part of its overall strategy going forward.

“Fans have to opt in [to the marketing program] and it’s very valuable for us if they do,” Lutes said.

In addition to Magic games, the Amway Center also has concerts and minor league hockey games, averaging about 150 events during a calendar year. Since the city attracts tourists from all over the world for conventions and its theme parks, Lutes said the arena also attracts an interesting out-of-town crowd who may be taking in an NBA game during their visit to the city. So it’s important for the team and city ownership to know as much as possible about who is coming through the arena doors.

With the team’s analytics implementation, the Magic can tailor marketing messages for specific types of fans. Though people might worry about getting a bunch of spammy email if they opt in, Lutes said the team’s system works in the opposite manner.

“Our business analytics group can quickly tell if a marketing campaign is effective, and if it’s not we shut it down,” Lutes said. “We don’t blast a lot of messages. It’s less intrusive and more effective.”

And it’s all based on data accumulated via the network the Magic made sure it owned.

“We wouldn’t have access to this type of information if we didn’t own the Wi-Fi network,” Lutes said. “It sets the stage for more personalized messages down the road.”

Filed Under: Basketball, Cisco, DAS, MSR Guides, NBA, Wi-Fi Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

AT&T Super Bowl Sunday stadium wireless traffic jumps 60 percent to 624 GB; Verizon claims 1.9 TB

February 3, 2014 by

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

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

Well, our prediction that this year’s Super Bowl might not set new wireless data records was about as solid as the Denver Broncos’ performance in the big game. According to AT&T, its wireless network in and around MetLife Stadium on Super Sunday saw 624 GB of traffic, a 60.8 percent increase from last year’s 388 GB total at the Superdome in New Orleans.

Part of the gain no doubt came from the fact that MetLife Stadium holds approximately 10,000 more fans during a football game than the Superdome, 82,566 to 72,003. But AT&T’s numerical evidence — including a new peak-time high of 119 GB during the hour before kickoff — shows that the desire to access mobile devices inside stadiums is still growing, especially at big games like the Super Bowl.

Verizon Wireless, which like AT&T spent more than a year getting MetLife’s network ready for Sunday’s game, also said it had experienced record traffic on its networks, claiming a total of 1.9 TB of cellular traffic inside MetLife Stadium. During the game Verizon Twitter accounts said new traffic records were set before halftime; however we still have no figures from Verizon for previous years’ data for comparison.

Verizon also claimed its peak hour usage was “800 percent” greater than last year’s, but again, we don’t have exact numbers so can’t confirm the accuracy of such claims. Still unkown is how much traffic was carried by the stadium Wi-Fi network which Verizon manages (and was free to all MetLife fans), since Verizon did not provide Wi-Fi traffic numbers. Our guess is it saw similar traffic leaps as AT&T’s and Verizon’s cellular nets.

Another interesting note from the AT&T data is a trend toward more mobile data use, and fewer voice calls. Fans at the game Sunday made 55,000 voice calls on AT&T networks, down from 73,000 calls in 2012. Some of that might have to do with the fact that last year’s game had a lengthy power outage, which no doubt prompted many “I’m OK” calls to loved ones. But still — a 20,000 call dropoff in the face of more than doubling data traffic seems to show that people are using their phones more, even if they are talking less.

Filed Under: 4G LTE, AT&T, DAS, Denver Broncos, NFL, NFL Mobile, Seattle Seahwaks, Verizon Wireless, Wi-Fi Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Norwegian soccer league signs with Cisco for stadium Wi-Fi, StadiumVision Mobile

January 30, 2014 by

In a business agreement unique because of its breadth, Cisco has signed a league-wide deal with the Norwegian Professional Football League to put Cisco’s Connected Stadium Wi-Fi infrastructure and its StadiumVision Mobile video system in possibly as many as 16 different stadiums.

In taking a quick look at some video on the league’s site it doesn’t appear that the NPFL has huge stadiums, but signing league-wide deals for its stadium technology is always a win for a provider like Cisco. With many teams, especially smaller operations, not having a lot of technology expertise on staff can mean that banding together as a league makes sense to strike better deals and to help figure out the technology in a way that benefits everyone.

Working with a local integrator called Datametrix, Cisco said it has four teams signed up already to implement the technology, with two scheduled to be finished before the end of the season. Though the overall deal is managed through the league, each team is responsible for funding its own infrastructure so the schedule of deployments is open-ended.

Though Cisco has been the equipment provider for Wi-Fi services in many stadium deployments worldwide, its StadiumVision Mobile technology — which “broadcasts” as many as four separate channels in-venue, which in the sports world is usually live camera feeds or replays — is fairly new. A signature deployment of StadiumVision Mobile is at the Brooklyn Nets’ Barclays Center, where the stadium app shows live video from different camera angles.

Filed Under: Cisco, Live Sports Video Consumption, Soccer, Wi-Fi Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Comcast to power free Wi-Fi at Niners’ new Levi’s Stadium

January 23, 2014 by

Who’s got better Wi-Fi than we do? Nobody! Under terms of a 10-year deal announced today, cable giant Comcast will provide backbone services and free Wi-Fi to the San Francisco 49ers’ new Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif., scheduled to open this summer. The wide-ranging agreement, which also will see Comcast providing in-stadium video and Internet services as well as voice services for the stadium operations, includes an on-site studio where Comcast’s regional sports network will produce shows, invariably including a lot of 49ers-based content, especially on game days.

No terms of the deal were announced, but for fans who want to stay connected at Levi’s, the twin 10 Gbps backbone pipes Comcast will bring in should be sufficient bandwidth even if everyone in all 68,500 seats fires up an iPhone, iPad or Android device. The sponsorship deal also answers one of the questions surrounding the Niners’ ambitious networking plans for Levi’s, mainly how they were going to pay for their robust Wi-Fi. Answer: They’re letting Comcast foot the bill, partially in exchange for the rights to control video feeds to all of Levi’s extensive digital displays.

The mission for Levi’s Stadium has always been to create an unparalleled gameday experience through the use of innovative technology,” said 49ers CEO Jed York in a prepared statement. “Comcast is the perfect partner to help us achieve that goal, as the services they provide will allow our fans to customize their individual stadium experience through the use of their own mobile devices.”

“Located in the heart of Silicon Valley, Levi’s Stadium will feature new and exciting ways for the team’s fervent and tech-savvy fan base to experience a live event, from ubiquitous WiFi to innovative mobile applications and rich video content,” said Bill Stemper, President, Comcast Business, in the same press release. “This partnership is representative of how Comcast, by deploying our full suite of consumer and business products, can deliver reliable, high-capacity Internet connectivity for fans, media and stadium employees while supporting various multimedia initiatives.”

Comcast now joins a growing list of technology sponsors for the Niners’ new digs, including software giant SAP, networking hardware vendor Brocade, semiconductor giant Intel, and TV maker Sony. What should be interesting is to see how the Niners’ deal with Yahoo over digital content either conflicts or doesn’t with the new Comcast deal.

While there’s probably still room for more vendors on the sponsor train, the Comcast deal is a huge one when it comes to the big question facing a lot of stadium owners and operators these days, namely how do you pay for Wi-Fi and other networking installments? The answer here is, find a dedicated partner who already does this for a living and who also has a related business — a regional sports network — that can also benefit from a close relationship.

Filed Under: Comcast, Intel, NFL, Wi-Fi Tagged With: , , , , , ,

NFL should take a chance on open APIs and gigabit Wi-Fi if it really wants to engage fans

January 16, 2014 by

When it comes to using technology, the NFL talks a really good game — but when it comes to decisions and deployments, the shield moves slower than a 3-yard cloud of dust. And it’s frustrating fans, who are looking for something along the lines of a run-and-shoot.

This week’s announcement of an agreement with Extreme Networks under which the technology company became the “official supplier of Wi-Fi analytics” is a good example of the NFL’s go-slow philosophy. While the deal is a small feather for Extreme and validation of its stadium Wi-Fi smarts, in the end it really doesn’t move many needles since it’s not a binding deal (meaning teams don’t have to use Extreme gear if they don’t want to) and also since many NFL stadiums don’t yet have fan-facing Wi-Fi. So while the NFL uses press events around such announcements to talk grandly of techno-fan engagement, what it really should be doing is spending some of its hoard of cash to help teams install super-fast networks in stadiums right now, instead of waiting for teams to do so on their own.

I get it that the networks are an asset for stadium owners, and in the long run they will want to reap the full benefits of their costs of deployment. And it’s hard to say there are things the NFL could be doing better, since the sport enjoys immense popularity for both its live and televised offerings. But nothing lasts forever. And if the NFL wants to keep justifying its hundreds-of-dollars ticket prices, it should offer its fans a game-day experience like no other — which should include super-fast, aka “gigabit” Wi-Fi. Fast Wi-Fi that connects instantly, and lets fans share photos, videos and more while at the game.

How much would that cost? Several million dollars to 10 million dollars per team? Even at the high end, it’s not like the league doesn’t have that kind of money to toss around. It does. Just its cellphone live-action rights contract alone — $1 billion from Verizon over 4 years — is enough to cover league-wide Wi-Fi deployments and more. And once those networks are in place, the NFL would be supremely set up to control and benefit from the possible coming explosion of in-stadium mobile device use. An explosion which could be even bigger if the NFL takes another radical step to open up its content and information to third-party developers.

Team apps are losing the battle

Right now whenever a stadium network is launched there is usually a grand accompanying plan for a “team app,” which promises just about everything a fan could possibly want, in the team’s eyes. The problem with these apps — which so far are largely being ignored — is that they are all developed from a team’s perspective, not a fan’s. My biggest complaint with most of the team apps (and this goes for other events and sports media channels as well) is that they try to do too much, and instead of being helpful are just a pain in the butt to use, with too much information and too many choices and constipated navigation.

I haven’t been to that many games lately but at the ones I’ve been to, here’s what I see people using their phones for at the games: Twitter. Instagram. Facebook. And text messaging. What’s the common denominator there? Simple, one-step apps that are already built into the user’s social sphere. And they’re more lively, too, with many pro athletes participating in places like Twitter with real, unvarnished conversations, unlike the team apps which are as boring and as sanitized as the only-good-plays replays on the stadium TV screens. If the NFL really wants to engage fans digitally, it should open up its APIs and free its video content, allowing third-party developers to build apps with real NFL content. (Why not try an open version of Megacast?) It’s a strategy that worked pretty well for Apple and the iPhone, where Apple gets a chunk of profits from an incredible ecosystem that was created simply by allowing the outside world to have access to the iPhone screen.

My guess is that what will happen is the exact opposite — the NFL, watching the success of MLB’s digital efforts, will sometime soon corral all its digital assets into a single NFL-sanctioned bucket, which it will then charge fans even more for. Get ready for your “NFL Digital Package,” maybe $200 more a year to get live video and highlights on your phone. And no, you won’t be able to share that content or create GIFs or Loops or Vines any of the other fun stuff that is going on right now in the sort of Wild West version of the digital sports world. Even though I would probably pay it, that direction sounds like hell. I’d rather see the NFL really embrace the future and let the creativity of all the fans and smart thinkers out there blossom. To revisit our opening metaphor, why not try a few deep downfield passes, NFL? Why keep running the ball inside?

Filed Under: Apps, ESPN, NFL, NFL Mobile, NFL Network, Verizon Wireless, Wi-Fi Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,
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