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AT&T: DAS network also set traffic records for 2014 World Series games at AT&T Park

October 28, 2014 by Leave a Comment

Giants CIO Bill Schlough (left) talks with workers in the park's main DAS head end facility.

Giants CIO Bill Schlough (left) talks with workers in the park’s main DAS head end facility.

In addition to the over-the-top Wi-Fi usage numbers, it turns out that the in-stadium AT&T cellular network also experienced record usage during the recent World Series games at AT&T Park, with Saturday night’s crowd using 477 Gigabytes of data, according to AT&T.

In case you’re not familiar with the DAS acronym, it stands for distributed antenna system, and basically is a network of small antennas that bring cellular service to the tightly packed fans inside stadiums or other large public venues. At AT&T Park, AT&T runs the network as a neutral host, meaning that Verizon Wireless, Sprint and T-Mobile customers can also use the DAS to connect. If you’re in the park and you haven’t enabled your device to connect via Wi-Fi, you’re probably connected via the DAS. However, the stats provided here are only for AT&T customers on the DAS, since AT&T doesn’t have visibility into the other carriers’ metrics. Since the Wi-Fi network is open to all, the Wi-Fi numbers we reported earlier are for all customers, no matter who their provider is.

But even just the AT&T cellular numbers are pretty impressive, perhaps not surprisingly so since a good-weather World Series game is a bucket-list event for most attendees, meaning that texts, tweets, selfies and Vines were likely flowing freely at all three games in San Francisco. Here’s a breakdown from AT&T about how much more data was used during the games last weekend:

— Fans used an average of approximately 447GB of data per game over the weekend on the AT&T cellular network. This is equivalent to more than 1.27M social media post with photos.

— The numbers represent an increase of approximately 29 percent in cellular data usage compared to the average game during the League Championship series vs. St. Louis.

— It’s an increase of approximately 109 percent in cellular data usage compared to the average game during the final home series of the regular season vs. San Diego (9/25-9/28).

— The peak hour of data usage during three home games was on 10/25 was from 5-6pm PT, the hour in which the first pitch occurred. In this hour more than 83GB of data crossed the AT&T venue-specific cellular network.

According to AT&T, the total combined Wi-Fi and AT&T DAS traffic hit a record high of 2.09 Terabytes on Oct. 25, the highest single-game total in AT&T Park network history. What would be even more interesting would be if we could get DAS statistics from Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile to get the total-total number for wireless data consumed during the biggest games of the year.

Filed Under: 4G LTE, AT&T, Baseball, DAS, Major League Baseball, San Francisco Giants, Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon Wireless, Wi-Fi Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Half a stadium using Wi-Fi? 2014 World Series games set Wi-Fi records at AT&T Park

October 28, 2014 by Leave a Comment

Though this year’s World Series still isn’t over, the three games this past weekend in San Francisco set new local records for fan Wi-Fi use, arguably cementing AT&T Park’s title as baseball’s best-connected stadium.

One of the more stunning numbers provided to us by Bill Schlough, the senior vice president and CIO for the Giants, was that nearly half the crowd in AT&T Park for Sunday’s Game 5 used the Wi-Fi network — a “take rate” we’ve never heard of before at any sporting event of any kind. According to Schlough the Giants’ Wi-Fi network had 20,638 unique users during Game 5, a take rate of 49.7 percent. (According to the official box score, the attendance that night was 43,087, give or take a Panda or four.) The game also set an AT&T Park record for Wi-Fi upload traffic with 747 Gigabytes of data being sent by people at the park out to the network.

(Including one special photo tweeted out by a former Giant you may have heard of.)

A record for downloaded Wi-Fi traffic, of 937 GB, was set during Friday night’s Game 3, and the record for a combination of download and upload traffic was set during Game 4, with a total of 1.62 Terabytes. According to Schlough, the total data transferred during the eight games of the 2014 postseason at AT&T Park was 10.3 TB, which is easily the high-water mark for any baseball stadium network we know of. (The total does not include regular cellular traffic carried by the AT&T Park DAS; we will add those numbers in when they become available.)

And while individual games such as Super Bowls or contests down the San Francisco Peninsula at Levi’s Stadium may set higher overall marks (thanks in part to having more fans in the building), we’d be interested to see if any other stadium networks can match AT&T Park’s season-long data number of 59.3 TB, which according to Schlough represents total traffic over 2014’s 91 games (regular and postseason) at AT&T Park.

One more fun number from Schlough: Since the park turned on its fan-facing Wi-Fi network in 2004, there have been 4,085,518 Wi-Fi connections during the 946 game days. Kansas City’s Kaufmann Stadium, which just got its Wi-Fi network installed recently, has one or two more games this season to start trying to catch the Giants from a networking perspective.

UPDATE: Looks like the Royals are claiming some already-decent usage of their Wi-Fi network:

Filed Under: 4G LTE, AT&T, Baseball, Cisco, DAS, Major League Baseball, San Francisco Giants, Wi-Fi Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

Confirmed: KC has MLB-provided Wi-Fi, part of plan to bring Wi-Fi and DAS to all MLB stadiums

October 23, 2014 by Leave a Comment

KC fans at seriesThe rumored Wi-Fi network at Kansas City’s Kauffman Stadium is now a confirmed entity, according to Joe Inzerillo, executive vice president and CTO for MLB.com. In a phone call Thursday, Inzerillo said the Royals’ new network is part of a league-wide effort to bring Wi-Fi to all MLB parks, a task he thinks may take another year or two to complete.

As MLB.com has stated publicly before — but maybe not spelled out in so much detail — it has a program under which Major League Baseball teams can “opt in” to have MLB.com and the nation’s top four wireless carriers participate in the funding and building of both Wi-Fi and DAS networks in MLB stadiums. Though he wouldn’t divulge the specific financial commitments for specific deals, Inzerillo said that under the program “everyone has some skin in the game,” though he did allow that the league and the carriers, not the teams, foot the bulk of the bills.

Still, Inzerillo stressed that individual teams play a huge role in the Wi-Fi deployments, from design to deployment to management on site. “It’s not just like we show up and we’re the Wi-Fi fairies,” Inzerillo said. “This program wouldn’t be possible without the teams and the work they do.”

Screen Shot 2014-10-23 at 1.27.54 PMGiven MLB’s synchronized digital strategy of having the same app — and only the same app — available for fans in each ballpark, Inzerillo said that having high-quality cellular and Wi-Fi networks in each stadium was a key necessity, especially to make MLB app functions like seat upgrades and concession purchases work.

“You need to have the right [network] plumbing in place or none of the other stuff matters,” Inzerillo said.

Kauffman Stadium’s network, Inzerillo said, was just one of about a dozen MLB Wi-Fi projects that got underway this year. That it was finished in time for postseason play was just luck, and not some last-minute installation due to the Royals’ on-field successes. “It was just a fortuitous thing that it was ready,” said Inzerillo, who said that construction of Wi-Fi at Kauffman had been ongoing for the past 5 to 6 months.

Though the network wasn’t promoted on the team’s website or anywhere else on the Internet, Inzerillo said the Royals were promoting it at the stadium. Even without a lot of advertising, fans found the network, he said, claiming “tens of thousands” of Wi-Fi connections during the Royals’ postseason run. However, Inzerillo also said some extra cellular trucks were brought in by some of the carriers for the Royals playoff games because the DAS at Kauffman isn’t quite finished yet.

Inzerillo said that anywhere from 22 to 26 teams will eventually end up using some combination of league-provided Wi-Fi and/or DAS. The league’s goal of having every stadium fully wired should be nearly complete by opening day of 2015, he said, with a more likely “final” goal of complete coverage reached sometime in 2016. In 2014, Mobile Sports Report research showed that 10 of the 30 MLB stadiums didn’t have fan-facing Wi-Fi; some of those teams (like Kansas City) will be getting MLB networks, while some other program participants are upgrading existing systems, Inzerillo said.

Under the MLB network deal, the DAS in each stadium will be a neutral-host deployment hosted by one of the four major U.S. cellular carriers — AT&T, Verizon Wireless, Sprint and T-Mobile — depending on things like regional/historical market share and existing contracts, Inzerillo said. While the carriers will operate the MLB DAS deployments, the Wi-Fi networks will be deployed, run and monitored by MLB, either from its New York City or San Francisco network operation centers, Inzerillo said. Wi-Fi gear will come mainly from Cisco, though Inzerillo said there is also a small percentage of Meru Networks gear based on teams that had previously installed Meru equipment.

Though Inzerillo said MLB may make some overall announcement once the league-wide project is completed, he didn’t necessarily think that having working Wi-Fi and DAS in stadiums was such a big deal.

“It’s kind of a weird thing to think about bragging about,” said Inzerillo, who compared Wi-Fi and DAS to plumbing as a basic stadium necessity, not an amenity. Having high quality networks, he said, “are table stakes for a modern facility.”

UPDATE: The Kansas City Royals are now officially promoting the Wi-Fi, with some usage claims:

Filed Under: 4G LTE, AT&T, Baseball, Cisco, DAS, Major League Baseball, San Francisco Giants, Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon Wireless, Wi-Fi Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Reports: Free Wi-Fi now available at Kansas City’s Kauffman Stadium for World Series

October 22, 2014 by Leave a Comment

Screen Shot 2014-10-22 at 2.38.07 PMAccording to reports from Kansas City, the previously Wi-Fi-less Kauffman Stadium now has a working free Wi-Fi network for fans, apparently installed recently by Major League Baseball’s advanced media group. Though we haven’t yet received any official confirmation about the network’s launch from either the Royals organization or from MLBAM, two separate sources confirmed that free Wi-Fi is available in the stadium, and apparently has been for a few weeks now.

In our reporting about MLB Wi-Fi deployments for our Q2 Stadium Tech Report, we found that Kauffman Stadium was one of 10 MLB parks not yet offering Wi-Fi for fans in the seats. But since this spring MLBAM has publicly said that it plans to help install Wi-Fi in the remaining parks that need it, including helping to pay for the deployment if necessary. One possible reason for the speedy deployment at Kauffman could be the joint marketing deal between Apple, MasterCard and MLBAM to promote the use of the new Apple Pay service, which is being offered at both Kauffman Stadium and AT&T Park during the World Series. San Francisco’s AT&T Park already has Wi-Fi, a service the Giants have offered fans since 2004.

Though a thorough search of the Kansas City Royals’ team website shows no mention of Wi-Fi services available at Kauffman stadium, one Twitter user has reported finding a free “speedy” Wi-Fi service at recent playoff games there, and another visitor to the park for yesterday’s World Series opener also reported a live Wi-Fi service available to fans. Another tipster has told us that the network uses Cisco Wi-Fi gear, but again, nothing has yet been officially confirmed.

Anyone lucky enough to have a ticket to tonight’s Game 2, send us a Wi-Fi speedtest if you can…

Filed Under: Apple, Baseball, Cisco, Fox Sports, iPhone, Major League Baseball, San Francisco Giants, Wi-Fi Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Giants: NLCS stadium Wi-Fi usage at AT&T Park quadrupled since 2012

October 21, 2014 by Leave a Comment

Giants senior VP and CIO Bill Schlough, at the office

Giants senior VP and CIO Bill Schlough, at the office

If you build a better stadium network, they will come… and use it even more. That’s what the San Francisco Giants are finding out, with stadium Wi-Fi data usage more than quadrupling this year compared to the last time the Giants were in the NLCS in 2012.

According to Bill Schlough, senior vice president and CIO for the Giants, fans at AT&T Park for the recent National League championship series with the St. Louis Cardinals used more than four times the Wi-Fi data that fans used in the 2012 series. Schlough said that in 2012 (also facing the Cardinals) fans at the four AT&T Park NLCS games used an average of 302 Gigabytes per game; this year, in the three games in San Francisco, that number was 1,247 GB per game.

Screen Shot 2014-10-20 at 9.26.21 PM

What makes the jump in data even more interesting is the fact that the number of overall users of the Wi-Fi network only increased about 19 percent from 2012 to 2014, with an average of 16,683 users on the network this year compared to 13,509 in 2012, according to figures from Schlough and the Giants. “It definitely shows how data per connection is what is really exploding,” said Schlough in an email.

Looking back another couple years is also instructive; in 2010, during the NLCS the AT&T Park network only saw an average of 6,511 fans using Wi-Fi per game. (The team did not track data usage at that time.) Though the World Series starts today in Kansas City, fans will have to wait until Game 3 in San Francisco Friday to use Wi-Fi since the Royals’ Kaufmann Stadium is one of the 10 MLB parks that don’t have fan-facing Wi-Fi.

White box at bottom is one of the under-the-seat Wi-Fi access points at AT&T Park.

White box at bottom is one of the under-the-seat Wi-Fi access points at AT&T Park.

Filed Under: 4G LTE, AT&T, Baseball, DAS, Major League Baseball, San Francisco Giants, Wi-Fi Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

Texting from games: A look back 10 years ago today, great Red Sox win and a first-ever live view of a fan sending a text

October 17, 2014 by Leave a Comment

I want to thank the esteemed Jon Brodkin for reminding me that 10 years ago today a very special night in Boston baseball history was also a watershed moment for me from both a sports fan and a professional capacity. Along with being there live to watch the start of baseball’s greatest playoff comeback ever, I saw for the first time, someone sending a text message during a game.

Yeah, we’ve all come a long way.

To refresh — it was 10 years ago today on a chilly Boston night when the all-hope-lost Red Sox rallied to win Game 4 of their ALCS series against the hated Yankees.

Since Voice over IP was one of my main beats then, I was flying in to Boston that night to attend the VON Conference — and when I got out of Logan I asked the cabbie if the Yankees had finally eliminated the Sox. He told me that even though it was late — around 8 p.m.? — the game hadn’t started yet, because it was scheduled to start after the NL game (St. Louis against Houston). So I dumped my bag in my Back Bay hotel room and hoofed it to Fenway, where I found someone selling one seat in the bleachers for face value. For $50, I was in for the baseball night of my life.

Who texts on a phone?

You probably all know how the game ended — as a Cubs fan I was not attached emotionally to the outcome, but sitting in the Fenway bleachers I was carried along with the agony and eventual ecstasy of the home crowd. What I remember most is: 1. You don’t get up when you’re sitting in the Fenway centerfield bleachers, because it bugs everyone else when you do. (I limited myself to one beer, one bad hot dog and one relief session, all on the same trip, so as not to fall out of favor with my very vocal seatmates.) 2. Boston bleacher fans probably know more baseball than any other place I’ve been (Wrigley, Candlestick, AT&T Park), including the minor-league history of not just their team’s players, but the opposition’s as well. 3. Everybody in the park knew Roberts was going to steal, and he did it anyway. 4. I’ve never before or since heard a fan eruption like the one that happened when Big Papi’s walk-off cleared the fences.

So yeah, greatest baseball game I’ve ever been to, no contest. But something else happened that night — that very cold night where I was glad to have remembered a wool cap and gloves — when I saw, during one inning break, a 20-something woman in the row in front of me doing something with her phone that seemed way more involved than dialing a number. Since she wasn’t talking but staring at her flip phone I had to ask what was up.

Screen Shot 2014-10-17 at 12.15.22 PM“I’m sending my friend a text message,” she said. I had only a vague idea what she was talking about. I mean, I think I knew it was possible to send a message to someone else using those three-tap spelling tricks, but I didn’t know anyone personally who did that. I also knew that anyone who pulled out a cell phone during a game was subject to ridicule, especially if you held the phone to your ear and waved when you knew you were on TV.

She explained that her friend had moved to New Orleans (for work or school, can’t remember) and was part of a loyal group of Bosox fans… and she was keeping him in the loop on how it felt to be in the bleachers, letting him know he was missed. I thought the idea was pretty cool, but it didn’t register with me that more people might want to do the same thing.

Fast forward to last night, when my Facebook feed lit up with friends’ video clips from the Giants’ walk-off NLCS win from AT&T Park. Yeah, we’ve come a REAL long way in 10 years.

I usually tell people my a-ha moment for starting Mobile Sports Report came at a CTIA conference in 2011, where AT&T CTO John Donovan told the crowd that for the first time ever at the Super Bowl earlier that year, there was more wireless traffic leaving the stadium than coming in — meaning that fans were sending texts and pictures out in great number, perhaps more so than ever thought before. That trend, of course, is what’s fueling the current wave of stadium network deployments, and that Super Bowl was certainly a watershed moment. But when I think a bit I remember that night in Boston 10 years ago and think… people have wanted to share these special moments for quite some time. Good to see more people getting the chance.

Filed Under: 4G LTE, AT&T, Baseball, DAS, Major League Baseball, New York Yankees Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,
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