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Stadium Tech Report — NFL stadium technology reports — NFC West

November 17, 2014 by

Editor’s note: The following team-by-team capsule reports of NFL stadium technology deployments are an excerpt from our most recent Stadium Tech Report, THE FOOTBALL ISSUE. To get all the capsules in one place as well as our featured reports, interviews and analysis, download your free copy of the full report today.

NFC WEST

Reporting by Chris Gallo

Arizona Cardinals
University of Phoenix Stadium
Seating Capacity: 65,000
Wi-Fi – Yes
DAS-Yes
Beaconing – No

As the site of the Super Bowl XLIX, University of Phoenix Stadium is in the midst of massive upgrades. This includes an $8 million dollar improvement for faster wireless and larger video boards. The stadium turned eight this summer and already has one Super Bowl under its belt. Look for more information about upgrades throughout the year before the big game on Feb. 1, 2015.

San Francisco 49ers
Levi’s Stadium
Seating Capacity: 68,500
Wi-Fi – Yes, 1,200 access points
DAS – Yes, 700 antennas
Beaconing – Yes

View from the Pepsi seating porch at the north end of Levi's Stadium

View from the Pepsi seating porch at the north end of Levi’s Stadium

There is a buzz around Levi’s Stadium entering this season. And for good reason. The brand-new venue boasts more than 1,200 Wi-Fi access points and 700 DAS antennas. Aruba Networks (Wi-Fi) and DAS Group Professionals are hoping to fulfill the 49ers’ desires to own the most-connected stadium in all of sports. An ambitious new team app, with replays and food ordering and delivery to all seats is also part of the technology offerings.

Early tests of the stadium network during the preseason and regular season opener were promising, with Wi-Fi performance at Super Bowl-surpassing levels. On the DAS side, strong cellular signals were reached, with a nearly full house of fans. The question for the network, like the team itself – can it keep performing at a high level during the full season?

Seattle Seahawks
CenturyLink Field
Seating Capacity: 72,000
Wi-Fi-Yes
DAS-Yes
Beaconing – No

Fans of the reigning Super Bowl Champions will have more to cheer for in coming years at CenturyLink Field. The question is, will the loudest stadium in the NFL stay that way if Seahawks fans are using their phones more often, now that Verizon has installed stadium-wide Wi-Fi using Extreme Networks equipment?

St. Louis Rams
Edward Jones Dome
Seating Capacity: 66,000
Wi-Fi – No
DAS-Yes
Beaconing – No

After a proposed $700 million dollar upgrade was rejected, the St. Louis Rams are still seeking to improve the Edward Jones Dome. The good news for fans is that for this season a Mobilitie neutral-host DAS should significantly improve cellular communications not just in the stadium itself, but also in the adjacent convention center.

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

Stadium Tech Report — NFL stadium technology reports — NFC East

November 13, 2014 by

Editor’s note: The following team-by-team capsule reports of NFL stadium technology deployments are an excerpt from our most recent Stadium Tech Report, THE FOOTBALL ISSUE. To get all the capsules in one place as well as our featured reports, interviews and analysis, download your free copy of the full report today.

NFC EAST

Reporting by Chris Gallo

Dallas Cowboys
AT&T Stadium
Seating Capacity: 105,121
Wi-Fi – Yes, 1,525 access points
DAS – Yes, 1,374 antennas
Beaconing – No

AT&T Fan Experience board with single message

AT&T Fan Experience board with single message

Everything is bigger in Texas – including connectivity. AT&T Stadium features 1,525 Wi-Fi access points and 1,374 DAS antennas. That’s enough cellular capacity to service the small suburb of McKinney, Texas. While watching Tony Romo target Dez Bryant, Cowboys fans will notice a new 130-foot LED display along the east platform. The AT&T Fan Experience board features 40 robotic panels that work in combination with other stadium displays to entertain fans all game along. And don’t forget the big TV hanging in the middle of the place!

New York Giants
MetLife Stadium
Seating Capacity: 82,500
Wi-Fi – Yes, 850 access points
DAS – Yes, over 600 antennas
Beaconing – No

The Super Bowl champions just three years ago, it appears their bunk mates’ play is rubbing off on the Giants. Like the cross-town Jets, the G-Men missed the playoffs for the second straight season last year. If it’s any consolation, the Giants still share one sports top venues in MetLife Stadium. AT&T and Verizon gave enough love and attention the stadium last year as host of Super Bowl XLVII. Over 600 DAS antennas, 850 Wi-Fi access points, Cisco StadiumVision with over 2,100 HD TVs around the concourse – that’s a recipe for a good time at a game, at least from a connectivity standpoint.

Philadelphia Eagles
Lincoln Financial Field
Seating Capacity: 69,176
Wi-Fi – Yes, 600+ access points
DAS-Yes
Beaconing – No

Lincoln Financial Field is one of the “greenest” stadiums in all of professional sports. And that’s not just because of the Eagles’ colors. All (100 percent) of the Eagles operations are powered by the sun and the wind. The stadium’s connectivity is something fans can get behind too. With over 600 Wi-Fi access points and a group of Extreme Networks’ “Wi-Fi coaches”, the Eagles are doing everything they can to make sure fans are connected at games.

Washington Redskins
FedEx Field
Seating Capacity: 85,000
Wi-Fi – Limited / club level only
DAS-Yes
Beaconing – No

A new coach, name controversy, and a $27 million dollar renovation underway at FedEx Field. It’s been an offseason full of distractions in the nation’s capital. The good news: The team just signed a deal with supplier Huawei to put Wi-Fi in the stadium, first in the club seats and then (hopefully) next year in the full seating bowl.

Filed Under: 4G LTE, AT&T, Cisco, Comcast, Dallas Cowboys, DAS, NFL, Verizon Wireless, Wi-Fi Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

FedEx Field gets suite-level Wi-Fi from Huawei

November 11, 2014 by

FedEx Field, home of the NFL’s Washington, D.C. franchise, is getting Wi-Fi service in its 330 suites from Chinese telecommunications gear provider Huawei, according to an announcement from the team and the company.

Rob Verkon, senior solution sales and marketing manager for Huawei Enterprise USA, said in a recent phone interview that the Wi-Fi network is currently being installed with a goal of making it available “for the final games [of the season] in December.” Washington hosts the St. Louis Rams on Dec. 7, and then has two more scheduled December regular-season home games, Dec. 20 vs. the Philadelphia Eagles and Dec. 28 against the Dallas Cowboys.

The deal is the first major stadium Wi-Fi win in the U.S. for Huawei, which claims to also have “networking and infrastructure” deployments in major stadiums in Europe. A major competitor to large U.S. networking firms like Cisco, Huawei has been at the center of controversy in recent years, including being tabbed as a security threat by U.S. government officials, and later as a reported target for N.S.A. surveillance.

According to the press release, Huawei has entered into a multi-year sponsorship deal as the “official technology partner” for the Washington team. Though Verkon would not reveal the specifics of the network deployment costs, he did confirm that the company will receive some payment in the form of advertising, signage and other sponsorship identification.

Verkon said Huawei will be deploying 170 802.11ac access points to cover the 330 suites in the 85,000-seat FedEx Field. Though there is no mention of further deployment arrangements in the press release, Verkon said that “the eventual project” will include bringing Wi-Fi to the full seating bowl for next season.

Currently, the Wi-Fi situation at FedEx is a bit of a black hole; according to Verkon there is some existing Wi-Fi service in the stadium, and the team’s home page even lists Wi-Fi in its stadium guide (with the message “Fans in the seating bowl may access the free wireless network. Please see signs around the stadium for for login information.”). But in our research for NFL Wi-Fi services for our most recent Stadium Tech Report, MSR could not confirm that Wi-Fi services were available for the entire seating area.

Filed Under: Cisco, NFL, 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

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

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

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: , , , , , , , , , , ,
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