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Levi’s Stadium app adds more ticketing, social media features for 2015 season

September 14, 2015 by

Levi's Stadium app showing direct link to 49ers team app. All photos: Paul Kapustka, MSR (click on any photo for a larger image)

Levi’s Stadium app showing direct link to 49ers team app. All photos: Paul Kapustka, MSR (click on any photo for a larger image)

You aren’t yet allowed to order up a touchdown or click a link to guarantee a 49ers victory, but new enhancements to the Levi’s Stadium app should make the game experience even better this season for all fans who visit Santa Clara for NFL games.

John Paul, CEO of Levi’s Stadium app developer VenueNext, laid out some of the improvements that fans will see when they use the stadium app starting at tonight’s season opener against the Minnesota Vikings. Tops among the enhancements are greater integration with the Niners’ separate team app, better support for electronic ticketing, and some interesting social media features that include the chance to see yourself live on one of the new big-screen TVs installed over the football offseason.

Though the Levi’s Stadium app got a good workout in 2014, with somewhere north of 200,000 unique users, Paul noted that number means there’s still a lot of Levi’s Stadium visitors who still haven’t heard of or bothered to use the app. “We’d love for more people to be aware of it [the app],” Paul said, and one way the VenueNext team is hoping to increase that number is through one-click integration with the existing team app, which focuses more on content and team information, and not the stadium-specific things like food ordering and ticketing that the Levi’s Stadium app supports.

App showing ability to buy pricey parking ticket for your RV

App showing ability to buy pricey parking ticket for your RV

The integration will start with one-click logos on both apps that lead directly to the other one — in the Levi’s Stadium app case, there is now a 49ers logo in the upper right corner that takes you directly to the team app (or to the app store if you haven’t downloaded it yet). Paul also said that if fans log in to the team’s Faithful 49 loyalty program on either app, they will be logged in on the other app automatically, so that any of the points-earning activities are tracked more easily.

Easier ticket transfers

Paul also said the Levi’s Stadium app will support more and easier electronic ticketing features, like the ability to transfer multiple tickets in one transaction, instead of having to do transfers ticket by ticket as was required last year. The app this season will also support in-game purchases of tickets to ancillary events and services, like the pregame RedZone Rally party area or the postgame Michael Mina parties. Fans can also use the app now to purchase premium parking, Paul said, and be guided right to the reserved spots via the app.

New outward-facing TV screen at Dignity Health gate

New outward-facing TV screen at Dignity Health gate

A fun new program with the app could allow fans to see themselves on the new big TV installed at the Intel gate, provided they log in to social media accounts with Twitter, Facebook or Instagram and tag a picture of themselves with the #levisstadium hashtag. Paul said Niners interns will be scouting hashtagged photos and then trying to match them to fans who are identified by beacons outside the Intel gate. If it works, fans should get a text or message alerting them to their pending 7 seconds of fame. “That feature should be a lot of fun,” Paul said.

And behind the scenes, Paul said that the VenueNext team worked hard to improve the app’s functionality when it encounters variable network connectivity, such as when a fan is connected to the Wi-Fi network but gets up and moves, an action that can temporarily cause a loss of connection. This year, Paul said, such actions shouldn’t affect things like food orders that have already been activated, since the app will work better on the back end to preserve such actions even if the user gets disconnected.

Not yet ready for launch but coming soon are two other interesting app features: One, Paul said, will allow fans to pay for and send (via in-seat delivery) food and beverage orders to other people in the stadium, provided they know that person’s phone number and seat location. Another feature will allow fans to use the stadium’s beacon-powered location system to meet each other, with the app showing where people are en route to an agreed meeting location. The first feature, Paul said, might be operational by the second game of the season, Oct. 4 vs. the Packers; the meetup function, he said, might not surface until mid-season.

Paul could not comment on any other VenueNext stadium deployments — the company has said publicly that it will have 30 new clients before the year’s end, and at the recent SEAT conference this summer yours truly heard several well-placed rumors that said VenueNext had signed other NFL team deals, but none have yet been publicly confirmed. Watch this space for more info soon!

Filed Under: Apple, Apps, DAS, Facebook, Instagram, Intel, Levi's Stadium, NFL, Social Media, Sports Social Media, Wi-Fi Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

DGP upgrades Levi’s Stadium DAS in preparation for Super Bowl 50

September 14, 2015 by

New 'chiclet' DAS antennas visible on the concourse overhangs at Levi's Stadium. All photos: Paul Kapustka, MSR (click on any photo for a larger image)

New ‘chiclet’ DAS antennas visible on the concourse overhangs at Levi’s Stadium. All photos: Paul Kapustka, MSR (click on any photo for a larger image)

After deploying one of the biggest and most robust stadium DAS networks at Levi’s Stadium last year, what did DAS Group Professionals do for an encore?

How about completely re-deploying a new DAS at Levi’s Stadium during the football offseason, just about doubling the capacity in a construction project that took place at a “live” venue instead of one under construction?

The ambitious renovation of the not-quite-1-year-old Levi’s Stadium DAS was all done in the name of Super Bowl 50, the NFL’s big game that is coming to Levi’s Stadium in February 2016. According to DGP president Steve Dutto, the huge jump in wireless traffic statistics at Super Bowl XLIX last February got the major wireless carriers working early to assure that the NFL’s 50th Super Bowl would have enough cellular capacity.

In addition to new antennas from DAS gear supplier JMA Wireless that can be more finely tuned, and more antennas and remote units to beef up coverage and support more cell sectors inside Levi’s Stadium, DGP and stadium owner the San Francisco 49ers also increased the DAS footprint outside the stadium in the adjacent parking lots, addressing what Niners COO Al Guido told MSR was a “primary concern” heard from fans during the inaugural Levi’s Stadium season.

Close-up of new DAS antennas (from mid-July, before the wires were connected)

Close-up of new DAS antennas (from mid-July, before the wires were connected)

Though work on the DAS will likely continue throughout the season, most of the construction and deployments were expected to be in place for the Niners’ regular season opener tonight versus the Minnesota Vikings.

Ready for another ‘Super’ cellular day

Though the unofficial totals for DAS traffic at the last Super Bowl that were in excess of 6 terabytes were the highest we’ve ever seen reported, DGP’s Dutto said that the top wireless carriers are expecting as much as 2.5 times that amount of traffic at Super Bowl 50, a load that might have swamped even the previously robust Levi’s Stadium DAS.

“The [cellular] traffic at the Super Bowl this past year was greater than anything anybody had seen,” Dutto said in a recent interview at Levi’s Stadium. All the carriers, he said, were “amazed” at the traffic jump from the year before, when AT&T and Verizon Wireless reported a combined total of about 2.5 TB of cellular data at Super Bowl XLVIII at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey. (For what it’s worth the Wi-Fi traffic also just about doubled, from 3.3 TB to 6.23 TB.)

The DGP team at Levi's for our interview included, L to R, Derek Cotton, director of engineering; Steve Dutto, president; and Vince Gamick, VP and COO.

The DGP team at Levi’s for our interview included, L to R, Derek Cotton, director of engineering; Steve Dutto, president; and Vince Gamick, VP and COO.

So even though the Levi’s Stadium DAS performed exceedingly well — according to Dutto “we turned it on and from day one it exceeded expectations” — and that there wasn’t any capacity problems during the Niners’ 2014 season, the expected impending crush coming in February spurred what Dutto called “carrier-driven upgrades” that included the need to take over some previous storage-room space to house the increased amount of head-end gear.

Under seat DAS antennas part of the upgrade

Inside the stadium itself, Dutto said that Verizon will expand its coverage from 60 to 80 sectors, while AT&T will increase from 45 to 54 or more sectors. DGP will increase its “zones” of coverage in the main seating bowl from 23 to 40, and will go from 250 antennas to 400, and from 330 remote units to 450. There will also be plenty of new antennas from JMA that Dutto said have “greater gain and sharper patterns” to enhance coverage.

“It’s almost like deploying twice the network in the same amount of time,” Dutto said. The other big difference from last year, however, was that Levi’s Stadium was open for events this past football offseason, from WrestleMania 31 to a NHL Stadium Series game to concerts with the Grateful Dead and Taylor Swift.

Another view of the antennas on the concourse overhangs

Another view of the antennas on the concourse overhangs

Though there was more than enough cabling areas and pathways to make the retrofit easier, Dutto said working around the live events increased the deployment degree of difficulty. But even with new head end rooms and extras like under-seat DAS antennas (a new deployment method at Levi’s Stadium for DAS), 20-plus new antenna placements in the parking lot and the accomodation of new 2.5-GHz spectrum for Sprint, Dutto said that the new network was expected to be at least “90 percent complete” before the season’s start.

As is regular with lead-ups to Super Bowls, there will likely be even more network tweaking and adjustment up until the last minute before kickoff on Feb. 7, 2016.

A ‘heart-attack” moment and hot dog machines

With any luck, the new network will work as well as the old one, and will hopefully light up without the “heart attack moment” that happened just before opening day last fall. Dutto and his team of Derek Cotton, director of engineering, and Vince Gamick, DGP’s vice president and COO, told of coming to Levi’s Stadium for the regular season opener last September and almost keeling over when they couldn’t detect the DAS network anywhere inside the building.

As it turns out, Dutto said that the major wireless carriers had forgot to turn down the power on their macro towers at the cell sites that surround Levi’s Stadium, which basically overwhelmed the internal network since Dutto said the outdoor cell sites operate at 80 watts, compared to the 2-watt in-stadium DAS network.

“There are six cell sites within hundreds of feet [of Levi’s Stadium] and since they hadn’t turned them down, we couldn’t see the network in the stadium,” said Dutto, whose pulse was revived when the situation was quickly rectified.

Close-up of the back of one of the new antennas

Close-up of the back of one of the new antennas

At least the Levi’s Stadium DAS couldn’t be turned off by stadium workers or blacked out by hot dog machines, problems that DGP encountered at the Niners’ old home, Candlestick Park, where DGP deployed a test DAS in the 49ers’ final season there in 2013. According to Dutto, for some reason the DGP network was connected by utility PG&E to the same electrical routes as the cookers for stadium hot dogs — and when those were turned on one Sunday the system was overloaded, bringing the DAS down with sausages.

The Candlestick DAS also suffered an outage when the park rangers who lived at the stadium thought the equipment air conditioners were too loud, so they turned them off — setting off multiple alarms for Dutto and his network administration team.

Safe to say, similar problems aren’t expected to arise as DGP and the Niners prepare Levi’s Stadium’s cellular network for Super Bowl 50, a tough task but one with rewards on both a personal and business level.

“This has been fun, and the Niners have been great to work with,” said Dutto.

Filed Under: 4G LTE, AT&T, DAS, Levi's Stadium, NFL, Super Bowl, Wi-Fi Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

Buffalo Bills tap Extreme Networks for Wi-Fi at Ralph Wilson Stadium

September 14, 2015 by

Screen Shot 2015-09-14 at 9.14.59 AMAdd the Buffalo Bills to the list of teams that installed Wi-Fi into their stadiums this offseason, as the Bills tapped NFL favorite Extreme Networks for a deployment at Ralph Wilson Stadium that was live for the regular-season opener against the Indianapolis Colts Sunday, a game the Bills won 27-14.

We’ll try to circle back with the team to get more details, but according to a press release on the Bills’ website the team picked Carousel Industries, Extreme Networks and Frey Electric for the deployment, which began in May this year. The Bills said the network went through beta-type testing this summer, at concerts for the Rolling Stones and One Direction, and during the Bills’ preseason schedule.

By our count, this is the ninth NFL stadium to use Extreme gear for its fan-facing Wi-Fi, a signal that Extreme’s preferred-supplier deal with the league is working well for all concerned. So far this season the Baltimore Ravens and the Green Bay Packers have announced Wi-Fi deployments from Extreme. Last year Ralph Wilson Stadium had a DAS upgrade that has no doubt been upgraded again recently, so for all types of wireless communications the Buffalo fans should be well served this season as they enjoy the Rex Ryan ride.

Filed Under: 4G LTE, AT&T, DAS, NFL, Wi-Fi Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

Stadium Tech Report: Los Angeles Dodgers hit it out of the park with Cisco, Aruba Wi-Fi

September 11, 2015 by

Dodgers Stadium, the SoCal baseball shrine. All photos: Terry Sweeney, MSR (click on any photo for a larger image)

Dodgers Stadium, the SoCal baseball shrine. All photos: Terry Sweeney, MSR (click on any photo for a larger image)

Growing up in the Los Angeles suburb of Norwalk, Ralph Esquibel recalled playing outdoors while inside the Dodger game was on the radio. “I knew from the kinds of noises coming out of the house how the game was going,” he laughed. Esquibel, now vice president of IT for the Los Angeles Dodgers, may have wished for some similar indicators or guideposts as he began the wireless retrofitting of Major League Baseball’s third oldest stadium (after Boston’s Fenway Park and Chicago’s Wrigley Field) in early 2011.

Esquibel faced multiple challenges with Dodger Stadium. First, there was all that concrete to push signals through or around. There was the size of the Chavez Ravine venue and its far-flung parking lots, spanning more than 350 acres. The stadium also has few overhangs, a favorite place to attach Wi-Fi access points or distributed antenna system (DAS) gear. Then there’s Dodger Stadium’s capacity — 56,000 seats – the largest in the league and almost 30 percent larger than the average MLB stadium (42,790).

Esquibel’s biggest hurdle? ” Trying to achieve the network that we wanted but also maintain an appropriate budget for the solution,” he said. While Esquibel would not specify what the Dodgers spent, he did allow that it was “an 8-figure project.”

Coverage challenges in the best seats

Initially, the best seats in the house presented a coverage challenge; field and club level seats along the third- and first-base lines and the dugout lack any overhangs. So while phones in those sections could receive a short, directional beam sent from across the outfield, the upstream signal couldn’t get back to the AP across the field, said Esquibel.

Ralph Esquibel, VP of IT for the Dodgers, with the new Wi-Fi relief pitcher mobile.

Ralph Esquibel, VP of IT for the Dodgers, with the new Wi-Fi relief pitcher mobile.

“We wanted to guarantee a premium experience, regardless of the seat,” said Esquibel, who joined the Dodgers 6 years ago after working in IT at Toyota and Honda. So by using what he calls “a hybrid approach,” Wi-Fi APs and antennas are installed overhead where possible, but also under seats and in staircase handrails that divide the stadium’s steep aisles.

All told, nearly 1,000 APs from Cisco and Aruba Networks blanket Dodger stadium, its concession areas and parking lots. Horizon Communications helped the Dodgers with design and installation of the Wi-Fi and DAS.

The under-seat APs/Wi-Fi antennas on the club level are housed in NEMA enclosures about every 15 seats, set eight rows apart. Esquibel was concerned about losing real estate under those seats; he also didn’t want to create any potential trip hazard for fans. In addition, the Dodgers use Cat 6A cabling, whose thickness and rigidity couldn’t run up a stepped incline. Consequently, they drilled through concrete to snake the cabling through from the clubhouse underneath. “There’s no visible conduit leading into the enclosure,” Esquibel explained. The profile and footprint of the enclosure still leaves space for fans to place belongings.

Handrail Wi-Fi enclosure

Handrail Wi-Fi enclosure

It’s the same modus operandi for the enclosures housed in the stair rails, except there are two APs in larger enclosures at the top of each staircase on the reserve level and upper deck, then a single AP per enclosure as the stairways descend. Some 290 APs offer coverage on the reserve level, which by itself has a greater capacity than nearby Staples Center (18,118 seats), Esquibel told Mobile Sports Report. After 2 years of use, there have been no issues with the AP enclosures. “We power-wash the seats and stands after games and [the enclosures] are very resilient against the sun, water and wind,” Esquibel said.

He also acknowledged some early challenges with Wi-Fi. Part of the issue was working with Cisco’s CleanAir technology, which is supposed to minimize RF interference, if not eliminate it altogether. If an AP starts broadcasting over a frequency in use by another AP, for example, CleanAir helps it find another frequency. It took a few months to fully tune the network; some directional antennas needed a 10-degree adjustment, Esquibel said. Another challenge was having APs from more than one vendor. “If your network is 100 percent Cisco and all leveraging the same controllers, [CleanAir] will work perfectly,” Esquibel said. “If you have a mixed environment that pushes Wi-Fi in certain locations, it becomes a problem — there’s competition for frequencies.”

Coordinating the APs

A third-party leveraging a non-public frequency would switch channels, for example, causing the APs for public use to also switch channels. “What we had was a lot of bouncing back and forth,” Esquibel said, which affected performance. “So we assigned channels and frequencies for each AP, which still requires a lot of coordination.”

Under-seat Wi-Fi enclosure

Under-seat Wi-Fi enclosure

Since 2013, the stadium has been carved into 24 DAS sectors. AT&T, T-Mobile USA and Verizon Wireless are the carriers presently using the DAS; Ericsson makes the DAS antennas. Stubborn Sprint relies on a tower adjacent to the stadium.

Dodger fans average anywhere from 500-655 megabytes of data use per game, according to Esquibel. During a busy game, the wireless networking accommodates 16,000 concurrent users; a slower event clocks in at 4,000-8,000. To test upload speed, Esquibel will push a 50MB video to Facebook. When there’s lots of available bandwidth, he gets 60 Mbps performance; on the low end, it’s closer to 4 Mbps. Esquibel said users are mostly streaming and posting videos and photos to social media; Dodger Stadium is the second most Instagrammed site in southern California, after Disneyland, Esquibel added.

The Dodgers have their own version of Ballpark, the in-stadium MLB app, which offers video replay and highlights; in-seat ordering of food and drink in certain areas; and stadium mapping. Check-ins on Ballpark are handled through a network of 44 iBeacons, which takes advantage of Bluetooth Low Energy (BTLE) technology. Between Ballpark and social media activity, Dodger fans have run up as much as 700 MB data usage during games — and the network is ready if more demand is needed.

“We don’t do any rate limiting, so if we consume all our bandwidth we get a free upgrade, thanks to a clause in our agreement with our ISP, AT&T,” Esquibel explained.

To ensure a family-friendly and wholesome environment, the Dodgers use Palo Alto Networks 5020 firewalls for content filtering. “As we developed our SLAs, it was one of the first issues to pop up — no sexual content, no malware/phishing, and no illegal drug sites,” he said.

What’s on his wish list for the future? “I’d like geo-fencing within the Wi-Fi network so if I see someone enter a club, I can say hi or welcome them, notify them of specials, or flag points of interest around the stadium,” Esquibel said, like the World Series trophy case or giveaway locations for promotional items. Alongside all the other applications, wireless can be used as guideposts for fans and visitors to Dodger Stadium.

Filed Under: 4G LTE, AT&T, Baseball, Cisco, DAS, Ericsson, Facebook, Los Angeles Dodgers, Major League Baseball, MSR Guides, Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon Wireless, Wi-Fi Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Extreme, DGP part of Wi-Fi and DAS upgrade coming to Florida State’s Doak Campbell Stadium

September 3, 2015 by

Screen shot 2015-09-03 at 10.47.36 PMExtreme Networks and DAS Group Professionals have been selected by IMG to build a new Wi-Fi and DAS network respectively at Florida State University’s Doak Campbell Stadium, the 82,300-seat home of the Seminoles football team, according to the school’s website.

Extreme, which has mainly made its stadium name in pro football venues, has one other college deployment that we know of but nothing on the scale of regular national-championship caliber FSU. DGP, which was relatively unknown until its Levi’s Stadium deployment last year, is now racking up big deals in a hurry, following its selection (also alongside Extreme) by the Chicago Cubs for new communications infrastructure at Wrigley Field.

Since the press release said the deals are only so far at the “evaluation” stage that means that Wi-Fi and DAS aren’t available yet. More details on this deal as we hear them, in what is shaping up to be a very busy season of new stadium deployments. This also appears to be the first fruit of the Extreme/IMG relationship announced last winter.

Filed Under: DAS, Extreme Networks, NCAA Football, Wi-Fi Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Wi-Fi for the Frozen Tundra: Extreme, Verizon bring Wi-Fi to Green Bay Packers’ Lambeau Field

August 28, 2015 by

Lambeau Field, home of the Green Bay Packers, now has Wi-Fi for fans. All photos: Green Bay Packers (click on any photo for a larger image)

Lambeau Field, home of the Green Bay Packers, now has Wi-Fi for fans. All photos: Green Bay Packers (click on any photo for a larger image)

Lambeau Field, the Green Bay Packers’ historic home, now has full fan-facing Wi-Fi services thanks to a deployment led by the Packers, Extreme Networks and Verizon Wireless.

Much like the deployment last year at the Seattle Seahawks’ CenturyLink Field, the Lambeau network will be ready for this season’s games and will feature separate Wi-Fi SSIDs for Verizon customers and for all other subscribers, according to the Packers and Extreme. The network, which was installed earlier this year, has approximately 1,000 access points in and around the venue, many on handrail enclosures to provide service to the large bowl seating areas where there are no adjacent overhangs.

Lambeau bench seating with railing-mounted Wi-Fi APs

Lambeau bench seating with railing-mounted Wi-Fi APs

According to the Packers, the network was live in a “testing” mode for some pre-football season events this summer, including a Kenny Chesney concert and the Brett Favre Packers Hall of Fame induction ceremony. Wayne Wichlacz, director of IT for the Packers, said the network wasn’t advertised at those events but was still found and used by fans in attendance.

Like at other Extreme deployments, the Packers will put together a group of “Wi-Fi coaches,” network-savvy people who will roam the stands on game days to help fans connect. According to the Packers they will partner with and help train local high school children to be the “coaches,” a unique twist.

Green Bay is the second NFL franchise to announce a new network built by Extreme for the upcoming season, following the news of an Extreme network being installed at the Baltimore Ravens’ M&T Bank Stadium. By our unofficial count this is the eighth NFL stadium to get an Extreme Wi-Fi deployment.

Wi-Fi APs visible on press box structure

Wi-Fi APs visible on press box structure

Verizon, which does not comment publicly on its Wi-Fi deployments, has also backed Wi-Fi networks for NFL stadiums in Seattle and Detroit, as well as at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. If the Green Bay network is like Seattle’s, Verizon customers can set their devices to automatically connect to the Wi-Fi network when it is detected. There will be no extra charge for non-Verizon users at Lambeau, and again if the network works like Seattle’s there won’t be any difference in performance between Verizon and non-Verizon customers on the Wi-Fi network. Verizon also built the DAS at Lambeau, which was already operational prior to this season. It’s not known if other carriers are on the Verizon DAS or not.

The deployment at Lambeau was no doubt a special challenge, given the historic nature of the venue and the lack of overhang space for APs for much of the bowl seating. Look for a more detailed profile of the network deployment in our upcoming Stadium Tech Report next month!

Filed Under: 4G LTE, DAS, Extreme Networks, NFL, Seattle Seahwaks, Verizon Wireless, Wi-Fi Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,
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