AT&T – Page 23

S.F. Giants add more Wi-Fi, ‘virtual reality experience’ to AT&T Park for 2016 season

March 29, 2016 by Paul Kapustka Leave a Comment

The view from AT&T Park’s left field corner. All photos: Paul Kapustka, MSR (click on any photo for a larger image)

The first ballpark to bring Wi-Fi to its fans is still padding its networking lead, as AT&T Park will have 543 new or upgraded Wi-Fi access points for the 2016 season, according to the San Francisco Giants.

Most of the new APs are of the under-seat variety, completing the team’s three-year plan to put more APs under seats to increase network density and capacity. According to Bill Schlough, senior vice president and chief information officer for the Giants, the park now has a total of 1,628 Wi-Fi APs, the most of any MLB stadium and more than most big football stadiums as well. With 78.2 terabytes of data used during the baseball season and another 20+ TB used during other events, Schlough said AT&T Park’s Wi-Fi network carried more than 100 TB of data in calendar 2015.

Since it’s an even year, the Giants expect to win the World Series again, so the action on the field should be pretty good. If you want to leave reality, however, the Giants can accomodate you in that realm this season with the addition of a “virtual reality experience” at the team’s @Cafe social media spot, located on the concourse behind the left-field bleachers.

Since it’s an even year, does that mean another one of these is on order for the Giants?

According to the Giants, fans can be “transported” to Scottsdale Stadium to view practice from spring training, or they can see views from the AT&T Park field, the batting cages and “even Sergio Romo’s car” through a VR headset.

The Giants said fans will also notice an upgrade to the stadium’s LED ribbon boards, which circle the park on the facings of the upper decks. The new Mitsubishi screens, the Giants said, offer 150 percent more pixels than their predecessors, meaning that you might not need those reading glasses to get stat updates or read advertising messsages.

On the DAS side of things, AT&T Park finally has all four major U.S. wireless carriers on its in-house cellular network, with the DAS and Wi-Fi serviced by 13 1-Gbps backbone pipes from AT&T.

Filed Under: 4G LTE, AT&T, Baseball, Cisco, DAS, Major League Baseball, San Francisco Giants, Wi-Fi Tagged With: 4G LTE, AT&T, AT&T Park, Bill Schlough, Cisco, DAS, MLB, Mobile Sports Report, Paul Kapustka, San Francisco Giants, Stadium Wi-Fi, under seat Wi-Fi, Virtual Reality

Betting the Under: Putting Wi-Fi antennas under seats is the hot new trend in stadium wireless networks

March 28, 2016 by Paul Kapustka Leave a Comment

White box at bottom is one of the under-the-seat Wi-Fi access points at AT&T Park. Photo: Paul Kapustka, MSR (click on any photo for a larger image)

What do you typically find under stadium seats on game days? The traditional list might include bags and purses, and get-out-of-the-way items like empty popcorn tubs, used hot dog wrappers and drink cups no longer filled with fluids.

And now you can add Wi-Fi access points and DAS antennas to the list.

A growing trend is emerging to use under-seat antenna placements to bring wireless signals closer to fans, for both Wi-Fi networks as well as cellular distributed antenna system (DAS) deployments. First used to compensate for a lack of overhang or railing placement spaces, under-seat deployments are now winning favor in all sorts of arenas for their ability to use human bodies to help build a more dense network, one that proponents say can carry far more capacity than an infrastructure that relies mainly on overhead antenna placements.

With proof points emerging quickly at venues like the San Francisco 49ers’ Levi’s Stadium and Texas A&M’s Kyle Field, as well as at pioneers AT&T Park and AT&T Stadium, under-seat Wi-Fi deployments may soon become more common, as more integrators and equipment suppliers embrace the under-seat method.

New stadiums under construction including the Sacramento Kings’ Golden 1 Center as well as new Wi-Fi deployments at existing stadiums like Houston’s NRG Stadium and the Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte are also planning to primarily use under-seat Wi-Fi deployments, both for the performance and aesthetic benefits. With such high-profile deployments embracing the method, under-seat APs may become the default placement position going forward, especially as stadium mobile-device usage by fans keeps growing.

History: a need required by architecture

Editor’s note: This excerpt is from our latest STADIUM TECH REPORT, our long-form PDF publication that combines in-depth stadium tech reports with news and analysis of the hottest topics in the world of stadium and large public venue tech deployments. Enjoy this PART 1 of our lead feature, or DOWNLOAD THE REPORT and read the whole story right now!

Giants senior VP and CIO Bill Schlough, at the office

When Wi-Fi first arrived in stadiums, the obvious solution to questions about antenna and access point placement seemed evident — just mount them on ceilings, overhangs and walls, like they had always been placed historically. Mostly that decision kept the antennas out of sight, and provided good-enough reception for most network deployments.

But as fan Wi-Fi usage started growing, poor reception areas cropped up, most often in the most expensive seats near the courts or playing fields, where there was often little architectural infrastructure other than the seats themselves. At the San Francisco Giants’ AT&T Park, the stadium where fan-facing Wi-Fi was first installed in 2004, the need for more bandwidth was a big problem that needed to be solved during the 2012-13 offseason, after the team’s second World Series title run in two years had produced record wireless usage.

Even with a Wi-Fi AP placed just about everywhere they could be, the San Francisco Giants’ IT team couldn’t keep up with demand. And the trick that has been tried at some stadiums — putting AP enclosures on handrails — wasn’t an option at AT&T Park, since its lower-bowl seating areas have no railings.

With options limited, that’s when an internal battle commenced around the new idea of placing APs under seats, a plan that met fierce resistance on many fronts.

“We got beaten up pretty bad over the idea [of under-seat APs],” said Bill Schlough, senior vice president and chief information officer for the Giants, who described the 2012-13 offseason as “a very stressful time,” with lots of internal strife and discord. With multiple stakeholders checking in on the plan, including the Giants’ facilities group, the marketing group and the ticketing group, concerns about the loss of under-seat space and the potential health concerns fueled opposition to putting APs under chairs.

But without any railings or overhangs for most of the park’s lower-bowl seats, Schlough and his team had “no other alternative” than to try placing Wi-Fi APs under seats. On the possible health issue, Schlough said the Giants were assured by technology partner (and ballpark title sponsor) AT&T that the deployment would be safe and comply with all FCC regulations; “We were assured that having [an antenna] 18 inches from your butt was the [radio] equivalent of having a cell phone in your pocket,” Schlough said.

On the storage-space concern side, Schlough said the Giants’ IT team made models of the antennas out of cardboard and duct tape, and placed them under seats to see how they worked.

“The [walking] flow through the aisles was good, with the AP models tucked under we never kicked them” during testing, Schlough said. With AT&T assuring the Giants that under-seat was “the way of the future,” the team took a leap of faith and added a large number of under-seat Wi-Fi APs in preparation for the 2013 season, more than doubling the number of APs in the park (to 760 total) in the process.

Under-seat Wi-Fi enclosure at Dodgers Stadium. Photo: Terry Sweeney, MSR

Though Schlough and his team “spent a lot of time” communicating with season-ticket holders about the new technology, there was still consternation about what might happen when opening day arrived, and “fans find this box under their seat, and not have a place to put their garlic fries,” Schlough said.

As it turns out, there was almost no resistance to the method; according to Schlough the Giants only had two complaints about the under-seat APs that first day of deployment, which Schlough called “the biggest relief day of my life.”

The success of the under-seat idea was particularly noted at that time by another IT team in the Bay area, the one putting together the wireless plan for the San Francisco 49ers’ new home, Levi’s Stadium, which was being built just to the south in Santa Clara. Testing some under-seat placements of their own at Candlestick Park during that venue’s final season as the Niners’ home, the team building the Levi’s Stadium network became convinced that going under seat was the best way to build the high-density deployment they wanted to have.

END PART 1… HERE IS THE LINK TO PART 2… TO READ THE WHOLE STORY NOW, DOWNLOAD OUR REPORT!

Filed Under: 4G LTE, AT&T, Baseball, Cisco, DAS, Levi's Stadium, Major League Baseball, San Francisco Giants, Wi-Fi Tagged With: 4G LTE, AT&T, AT&T Park, Bill Schlough, Cisco, DAS, Levi's Stadium, MLB, MLBAM, Mobile Sports Report, Paul Kapustka, San Francisco Giants, Stadium Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi

AT&T: NCAA Men’s hoops sites used 3.6 TB of cellular data

March 22, 2016 by Paul Kapustka Leave a Comment

While your bracket was busy getting busted, AT&T said it saw more than 3.6 terabytes of cellular data cross the networks at the eight stadiums hosting the first rounds of the men’s NCAA basketball tournament last weekend.

In Providence, R.I., at the Dunkin’ Donuts Center, AT&T said it saw 926 GB of cellular data cross its networks there during the first round games, a total perhaps helped by the Yale-Duke game in the second round. Stay tuned for more data updates from NCAA regionals as well as from the Final Four. And any other carriers that want to send their numbers along, please do so!

Filed Under: 4G LTE, AT&T, Basketball, DAS, Duke University, NCAA Hoops Tagged With: 4G LTE, AT&T, DAS, Final Four, Mobile Sports Report, NCAA, NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament, Paul Kapustka

University of Wisconsin takes on Wi-Fi, Badger Game Day app upgrades

March 21, 2016 by Terry Sweeney Leave a Comment

Camp Randall Stadium, University of Wisconsin. Photo: Dave Stluka

Sports fans at the University of Wisconsin have been enjoying a nice technology two-fer for the last 20 months: In addition to new Wi-Fi and beacon technology at its largest sporting venues in Madison, Wisc., the university also released v3.0.2 of its Badger Game Day app which adds live and archived video, among other features, for fans and their smartphones.

Jim Roberts, director of technical services for the university’s athletic department, described this as a happy coincidence as opposed to a larger strategy to bring sports technology to the Badger faithful. “Knowing that the new Wi-Fi system was coming, the group working on the app upgrade was able to incorporate more features, knowing fans could take advantage of the improved Wi-Fi and not rely solely on cellular data plans,” Roberts said.

Editor’s note: This profile is an excerpt from our latest STADIUM TECHNOLOGY REPORT, which is available for FREE DOWNLOAD from our site. In addition to this stadium tech deployment profiles we also take an in-depth look at the new trend of deploying Wi-Fi and DAS antennas under seats, and provide a wireless recap from Super Bowl 50. GET YOUR COPY today!

The Wisconsin venues are Camp Randall, a bowl-style football stadium with a capacity of 80,321; and nearby Kohl Center, used for hockey, basketball, concerts and other live events with room for 17,230. The LeBahn Arena, built for women’s ice hockey with a capacity of 2,273, is also included. In part because of their proximity, Roberts and his team used the upgrades to replace and enhance the underlying infrastructure for the venues – core switching, Wi-Fi access points, an IPTV system, cabling, electrical power and HVAC improvements — $11 million for the whole package, according to Roberts.

“Due to the expected size of the population connecting to Wi-Fi, we had to upgrade the entire network,” he explained, adding that the previous 10/100 Mbps backbone with Gigabit Ethernet uplinks and its 32,000 MAC address capacity was insufficient for the job.

“We upgraded our core to some pretty big Cisco routers at each venue that could handle 128,000 MAC addresses, with 10-gigabit fiber to all 33 telecom rooms within the Camp Randall complex,” he said; they also added about 1,100 wireless APs. Camp Randall got upgraded during the summer of 2014; the Kohl Center and LeBahn were done a year later.

Kohl Center

Camp Randall proved to be the largest test, both from an engineering and design perspective. Built in 1917, its open bowl lacks the overhangs from which RF engineers love to hang antennas and other infrastructure.

“The east side of the bowl became our biggest challenge with getting the signal to penetrate deep enough into the sections,” Roberts said, adding that the problem was especially acute for seats closest to the field, where the first few rows are tarped over. Initially, APs were installed below the tarps, but the signal only carried 10 rows back.

“We ended up mounting the APs on the front, 4-6 feet up from ground level,” and above the tarps, he explained. “They don’t affect the sight lines for spectators. But getting the APs to shoulder height from waist height definitely helped us get it back to row 25.”

APs were also mounted just above the entry tunnels, where the hardware and antenna could be attached to railings and concrete. Cisco is the University of Wisconsin’s AP vendor; the deployment uses Cisco model 3700s.

Wi-Fi install over a VOM at Camp Randall (click on photo for a larger image)

Roberts and his team also ran into some structural issues with waterproofing and cabling that kept them from putting in more APs in the student section. They had to re-calculate where the APs would go; consequently, coverage can be spotty in the student section, which is exacerbated by the high density of phones in that part of the stadium. AT&T and Verizon both have DAS infrastructure in Camp Randall that helps coverage, but Roberts and his team are looking at long-term solutions for Wi-Fi coverage in that section and throughout Camp Randall.

The University of Wisconsin worked closely with AmpThink on a facility-wide Wi-Fi analysis, according to Bob Lahey, a network engineer in the athletic department. AmpThink did the design and tuning and worked out some issues in advance. “Our facilities staff and [AmpThink] discussed locations for best coverage and worked through the aesthetics before we started the project,” Lahey said. AmpThink was also onsite during the first year to see how the Wi-Fi performed with people in the bowl. “You can only figure out so much without people there,” Lahey laughed.

Getting Online at Camp Randall

The stadium’s fan-facing wireless network, Badger WiFi, is a captive portal that asks users for their name, email address and zip code. There are also two boxes: one, users must check to agree to terms and conditions of service; the second allows the university to send them emails, and by default, the second box is checked. “Our plan is to send them email surveys and allow them to remain on the system and not have to re-authenticate every time they come to one of our buildings,” Lahey said. “But if they uncheck, they have to re-authenticate.”

The university does no bandwidth limiting or throttling back usage once users are logged in. “We’ve got dual 10-gigabit links and 100-gigabit to the world, so we’re not too concerned about overall bandwidth,” Lahey said. “We limit each radio in the AP to a maximum of 200 clients. It doesn’t happen often, but we see it occasionally.” Camp Randall users normally get at least 1 Mbps bandwidth — plenty for checking scores or posting to social media, Lahey added. Kohl Center users average 40-60 Mbps because the venue is less dense.

Screen shot of Wi-Fi portal login

At present, 65-70 percent of Badger Wi-Fi clients are on 5 GHz spectrum rather than 2.4 GHz. Roberts finds the 5 GHz band easier to manage, and said users get a better experience. “If we have problems with wireless, it is most times an older couple with their iPhone 4,” Roberts said. “APs can only do so much, but sometimes a phone [using 2.4 GHz spectrum] will want to connect with an AP a half mile across the field rather than one that’s 10 feet away.”

He also said the maximum number of unique clients for Camp Randall is about 26,000, or 37 percent of the crowd. “We assume that’s going to keep growing and we’ll have to augment the system,” he said. “At some point we won’t have enough access points.”

Game Day Gets a Badger Refresh

Concurrently, the Badger Game Day smartphone app was getting new features like live video replay and interaction with Bluetooth-based beacon technology. The app’s first iteration was initially for football, then expanded to all 10 sports that sell tickets; the latest version embraces all 23 sports at the University of Wisconsin, men’s and women’s. “Not many schools have all their sports represented, so while the traffic may not be high on rowing, it’s a great recruitment tool,” said Ben Fraser, director of external engagement for the athletics department. “So it helps there with the coaches sending out links or for parents and other supporters.”

It also helps with fans. “Collegiate and professional sports venues are looking for how to keep fans entertained and also allow them to participate in the game via social media and other methods,” noted Tam Flarup, director of the athletic department’s website services. When there’s break in the action, Badger fans are busy posting to Facebook, Instagram and of course, Wisconsin’s infamous Jump Around. “Twitter’s also allowing Periscope live video in its tweets now,” Flarup added. “Our fans will like that – it keeps them in the stands with a great game day atmosphere and experience.”

The university developed the first two iterations of Badger Game Day internally but chose to outsource the upgrade to sports-app developer YinzCam in June 2015 and gave them a tight deadline to meet — Aug. 30, just in time for Badger football season. YinzCam delivered on time, and then met an Oct. 15 deadline for revisions and tweaks, Fraser said.

Badger Game Day now includes live video replay from four different camera angles; YinzCam’s secret sauce makes streaming video across Wi-Fi more efficient. “Video would have been impossible without the Wi-Fi investment we made,” Fraser said.

Unlike previous iterations that only allowed the participation of a single sponsor, the new Badger Game Day app gives the university the ability to sell individual pages and sports, Fraser said.

Game day beacon message to app

Perhaps the leading edge of Badger Game Day is its use of Bluetooth-based beacon technology and messaging with geo-fencing. Gimbal Inc. worked with the university customize the technology; Fraser and his team did some social media messaging to alert fans to the feature and to remind them to turn it on.

The first remote use of messaging with beacons and geo-fencing was in Dallas for Wisconsin’s season opener in Dallas at AT&T Stadium; the feature was then used continually at both Camp Randall and the Kohl Center.

“We continued to use this messaging on the road for the Holiday Bowl in San Diego,” Fraser said. “Messages varied from welcome messages that were linked to videos from our players, to informational messages that informed fans about events, to scavenger hunts that engaged our fans at these sites.”

When users first download the app, there’s a proximity allowance message that they must activate to receive beacon messages. So far, the university has sent out 46 unique messages, 21 of which were geo-fenced. At each home game, they geo-fence Camp Randall with a welcome video from players; they reached an average number of 1,160 fans per game with these welcome messages and videos.

“We’re still learning how fans are using [beacons and Bluetooth], and we’re trying not to hit them with too many ads,” Fraser said. By building their trust, it encourages fans to leave their Bluetooth on for the signal to find them. “And we are looking for ways to improve it,” he added. Potential future additions: Features that show the length of lines at concession stands and restrooms, and an online lost and found. They’re also looking for more robust scheduling information inside the app — such as which broadcast network is carrying the game, along with links to Wisconsin’s video stream and live stats.

App development and a new server cost the university about $100,000, according to Fraser and Flarup. Since August 2015, there have been 123,000 downloads of Badger Game Day and nearly 1 million page views. Average time spent per game on the audio feature of the app is about 14 minutes. There’s more room to grow as fans continue to download and use the app; there’s plenty of revenue upside as well as sponsors discover multiple avenues for their messaging and content.

Filed Under: Apps, AT&T, Basketball, Cisco, DAS, NCAA Football, NCAA Hoops, Verizon Wireless, Wi-Fi, YinzCam Tagged With: Apps, Badgers, Beacons, Camp Randall Stadium, Cisco, DAS, Mobile Sports Report, NCAA, Paul Kapustka, Stadium Wi-Fi, University of Wisconsin, Wi-Fi

NCAA hoops sites get wireless upgrades to handle tourney traffic

March 17, 2016 by Paul Kapustka Leave a Comment

The two “sliced” balls in the center are AT&T’s new “Ten-Ten-Antenna,” so called because it delivers 10x the cellular coverage of any previous such device. Photo: AT&T

In addition to ticket sales and hotel revenues, you can count on an NCAA basketball tournament crowd to bring wireless demands to host stadiums these days. To prepare for the expected crush, wireless carriers, third-party integrators and venues themselves have bolstered both DAS and Wi-Fi networks, especially at NRG Stadium in Houston, site of the men’s Final Four April 2 and 4.

NRG Stadium, also home to the NFL’s Houston Texans, is slated to host Super Bowl LI next Feburary, and as such will be getting a new Wi-Fi network built by 5 Bars with gear from Extreme Networks ahead of the biggest big game. Unfortunately for data-hungry hoops fans, construction on that network won’t start until after the Final Four, meaning it will be cellular-only for the fans and followers at the championship weekend games.

But connections for customers of major carriers should be fine, since AT&T has already spent $25 million on Houston-area DAS upgrades, including at the stadium itself as well as at the convention center and other areas hosting Final Four activities. There will also be a portable Cell on Wheels, or COW, outside the convention center, where AT&T’s ball-shaped directional antennas will be bringing extra capacity to the scene.

Verizon said that it has already spent $40 million on improving its cellular infrastructure in and around NRG Stadium; inside the venue Verizon said its updated DAS deployment has 783 antennas, able to handle four times the capacity of the previous infrastructure. Outside the stadium Verizon said it has implemented an outdoor DAS to cover parking lots and tailgating areas. Verizon said it is also targeting downtown areas and the Houston airport for improvements ahead of Super Bowl LI.

At some of the regional tourney sites, third-party neutral host ExteNet Systems has been busy as well, adding capacity to some of its stadium DAS deployments as well as to one Wi-Fi network it runs at the Dunkin’ Donuts Center in Providence, R.I. At the Wells Fargo Arena in Des Moines, Iowa, ExteNet recently added U.S. Cellular to its DAS deployment, the first venue in which U.S. Cellular has been an ExteNet customer. Other ExteNet deployments that will see men’s or women’s NCAA games this year include the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, N.Y.; Bankers Life Fieldhouse in Indianapolis; and the Webster Bank Arena in Bridgeport, Conn.

In Denver at the Pepsi Center, a new (but not yet publicly announced) Wi-Fi network using Avaya gear should get a good test if it is live for the regional games there this weekend. With all these and more, if any fans or venues want to send speedtests in or post-games stats, we’ll happily print them.

Filed Under: 4G LTE, AT&T, Basketball, DAS, NCAA Hoops, Verizon Wireless, Wi-Fi Tagged With: 4G LTE, AT&T, DAS, Final Four, Houston, Mobile Sports Report, NCAA, NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament, NRG Stadium, Paul Kapustka, Super Bowl, Verizon Wireless, Wi-Fi

Commentary: Will stadium networks ever catch up with demand?

March 14, 2016 by Paul Kapustka Leave a Comment

Dallas fan in mobile action at AT&T Stadium. Photo: Phil Harvey, MSR

If there’s one thing the stadium-networking industry learned — or should have learned — from the stunning stats from Super Bowl 50, it’s that nobody really knows where or when the demand for in-venue bandwidth will stop growing.

Thanks to the smart folks who built the Levi’s Stadium Wi-Fi network — and the smart deployers and carrier partners who doubled down on the DAS this summer — the venue was able to handle an incredible 26 terabytes of wireless data on Super Sunday, with 15.9 TB amongst the four major cellular carriers on the DAS, and 10.1 TB on the stadium’s Wi-Fi network. Both were easily new records for single-day events, far eclipsing the totals seen at Super Bowl XLIX the year before.

The question, of course, for everyone else is: What comes next? And what does that mean for networks built in the past few years?

Keep building for growth

Editor’s note: This column is an excerpt from our latest STADIUM TECHNOLOGY REPORT, which is available for FREE DOWNLOAD from our site. In addition to this analysis and stadium tech deployment profiles we also take an in-depth look at the new trend of deploying Wi-Fi and DAS antennas under seats, and provide a wireless recap from Super Bowl 50. GET YOUR COPY today!

Texas A&M student recording the halftime show. Photo: Paul Kapustka, MSR

In some follow-up discussions with folks from Aruba, the Levi’s Stadium networking team, Verizon Wireless and others in the industry, I wondered out loud if what we are seeing is just yearly growth in demand, or whether expanded networks are merely satisfying pent-up demand that was always there.

To be sure, the “big” events like the Super Bowl, the World Series and the Final Four are always going to generate outsize traffic numbers, especially as more and more fans join the selfie craze and post photos and videos from the stadium, showing the rest of the world how great their life is. According to Verizon, the amount of traffic uploaded on their DAS network at Super Bowl 50 was double the upload traffic the carrier saw at Super Bowl XLIX, validating Verizon’s belief that traffic was going to grow significantly.

For mobile traffic in general, and for in-stadium wireless activity specifically, the continued growth over the past few years can likely be traced to a number of factors, including the ever-increasing power of mobile devices; the new number of bandwidth-hungry apps that incorporate images and video; and a steady increase in familiarity with devices and apps, as older folks — those more likely to purchase event tickets — catch up to their kids in wanting to use, and being able to use, the content-sharing features of social media and other communication apps. And, simply, more people trying and successfully connecting to in-stadium networks, reversing historical thinking that told them from experience in past years that connecting at a stadium was futile. In almost all venues these days, no longer is that the case.

So with no end yet in sight to the general doubling of traffic on a year to year basis, the big question out there for stadium technology teams has to be — is what we have now enough to handle growing needs, and if not, what are we going to do about it? The fact that cellular carriers (correctly) assumed they needed to add capacity to the Levi’s Stadium DAS a year after it was deployed should give pause to anyone building a network right now; though your venue may not be hosting the Super Bowl anytime soon, it might not hurt to re-think the traffic projections that have been made and step them up a bit, just in case.

These signs are up all over AT&T Park. Photo: Paul Kapustka, MSR

On both the Wi-Fi side and the DAS side, we may also be looking soon at a need for new kinds of technology to help build the networks of the near future. In this issue we take an in-depth look at the trend toward putting antennas for both Wi-Fi and DAS under seats, mainly to build networks that are more dense and can handle more traffic.

Verizon, which pioneered DAS under-seat antennas at Levi’s Stadium this year, said it is already seeing stadiums where just adding another sector of traditional DAS produces diminishing returns; if traffic on both types of networks keeps growing at the current rate, when will existing designs become obsolete? And what will replace them?

Stadium network owners shouldn’t ignore policy

As stadium-networking types ponder the future, it would serve the industry well to start thinking together as well, especially in the areas of telecom policy and standards-setting. As the builders of telecom networks worldwide ponder the future of 5G technologies there are some discussions where stadium networking representatives are nowhere to be found, especially in the potentially troubling direction of LTE-U, the idea of carriers using unlicensed bands for LTE traffic.

It’s still early days in the LTE-U discussions, but a recent decision by the FCC to allow carriers to conduct tests of the technology should be a call to action for the stadium networking industry. While nobody knows quite for sure yet what will happen to an in-venue Wi-Fi network if and when LTE-U traffic appears, it seems to make sense for the industry to get together and at least present some kind of unified voice before decisions get made.

At the recent Silicon Flatirons telecom policy conference in Boulder, Colo., there were exactly zero representatives from the venue Wi-Fi ecosystem present, including no visible representation from the Wi-Fi and DAS gear manufacturers who sell into the stadium networking space. With telecom providers hungry for spectrum of any kind, it’s a fool’s bet to assume that the unlicensed bands used in stadiums worldwide today will remain as free and available as they are now. It’s just another factor that’s needed to be considered, as venue tech professionals plan for a future of ever-increasing needs.

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