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Texas A&M’s fiber-backed Wi-Fi at Kyle Field records 5.7 TB of data during Alabama game

October 29, 2015 by Leave a Comment

Scoreboard, Kyle Field. Photos: Texas A&M

Scoreboard, Kyle Field. Photos: Texas A&M

We’ve been hearing rumors about how much data was flowing at the new fiber-based Wi-Fi network at Texas A&M’s Kyle Field this fall, and now we finally have some verified numbers that are sure to pop some eyeballs: According to the networking crew at Corning, fans at Kyle Field used 5.7 terabytes of Wi-Fi data during the Oct. 17 game against Alabama, which the Aggies lost 41-23.

In case you are keeping score the 5.7 TB mark is the second-largest single-game Wi-Fi usage number we’ve seen, trailing only the 6.2 TB recorded at Super Bowl XLIX in Glendale, Ariz., earlier this year. Before you pin it all on the network, however, be aware that the newly refurbished Kyle Field can hold a whole lotta fans — the announced attendance for the ‘Bama game was 105,733, which is 35,000+ more fans than the 70,288 who attended the Super Bowl at the University of Phoenix Stadium on Feb. 1. Still, building a network to support basically another baseball stadium’s worth of fans is pretty cool, too.

Other related numbers from the Wi-Fi network are in Super Bowl territory as well, including the 37,823 unique clients recorded during pre-game and game time, as well as the 26,318 peak concurrent user count. We’re not sure why only 10 people tweeted about the Wi-Fi (8 good, 2 bad) but the 3.2 Gbps throughput should also turn some heads.

Corning ONE DAS headend equipment at Texas A&M's Kyle Field deployment

Corning ONE DAS headend equipment at Texas A&M’s Kyle Field deployment

The question this all raises for us is, has the availability of a fiber backbone allowed fans to simply use more traffic? And is the demand for mobile data at big events perhaps even higher than we thought? With a regular-season game at Nebraska hitting 4.2 TB earlier this season, it’s pretty clear that data demands are showing no signs of hitting a plateau. Or maybe we can deduce that the better the network, the more traffic it will carry?

It’s also worthwhile to note that stats this season from AT&T have shown several 1+ TB data totals for games at Kyle Field on the AT&T DAS network, which uses the same fiber backbone as the Wi-Fi. This “fiber to the fan” infrastructure, built by IBM and Corning, will also be at the core of the network being built at the new home of the NFL’s Falcons, the Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, scheduled to open in 2017.

We’ll have more soon from Kyle Field, as Mobile Sports Report is scheduled to make a visit there for the Nov. 7 game against Auburn. If you plan to be in College Station that weekend give us a holler. Or a yell, right? We are looking forward to seeing the stadium and the network firsthand, to do some speedtests to see how well all areas are covered. With 5.7 TB of Wi-Fi, it’s a good guess the coverage is pretty good.

(Statistics provided by Corning for the Oct. 17 game are below.)

Screen Shot 2015-10-29 at 9.50.45 PM

Filed Under: 4G LTE, AT&T, DAS, NCAA Football, SEC, Super Bowl, Wi-Fi Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Buffalo on top of NFL… in AT&T DAS usage, anyway

September 29, 2015 by Leave a Comment

Ralph Wilson Stadium

Ralph Wilson Stadium

These numbers are over a week old but it’s still interesting to peruse the DAS data sent our way by the folks at AT&T, who found that Buffalo Bills fans (or at least the people at the Buffalo Bills game at Ralph Wilson Stadium on Sept. 20) used 1.226 terabytes of wireless data on the AT&T network at the stadium.

Granted, the Bills fans in the audience may not have been thrilled at the 40-32 victory for the visiting Patriots, but having the defending Super Bowl champs in town is probably a very likely reason there was more device use there than at any other stadium with an AT&T DAS that weekend. According to the AT&T totals, Kansas City was second in DAS use for the NFL games weekend of Sept. 17-21 with 876 GB used, followed by New Orleans (852 GB), Chicago (645 GB) and Washington, D.C. (627 GB). Remember, these totals reflect ONLY the AT&T customer use on the AT&T networks at the stadiums in the cities mentioned.

Any other large wireless carriers out there who would like to send us their stats, we will print them. Just sayin’.

On the collegiate side of things that weekend we have an old favorite and a new rising star at the top of the AT&T DAS list, with the University of Miami’s OT thriller 36-33 win over Nebraska at Sun Life Stadium racking up 1.228 TB of data.

Scoreboard, Kyle Field

Scoreboard, Kyle Field

With its new seats, Sun Life seems to have kept its old great network, which last year recorded some of the highest data totals anywhere, for both college and pro games.

In second place was Texas A&M’s Kyle Field, where (as far as we can tell) the new fiber-based DAS and Wi-Fi network isn’t even fully functional yet, but it still recorded a healthy 1.030 TB on the AT&T DAS network during a 44-27 Aggies win over Nevada. We are looking forward to seeing stats from Oct. 17, when Alabama comes to town (and all network systems should be fully functional).

Rounding out the top-five list for college stadiums on the AT&T network that weekend was Alabama with 993 GB used; LSU (927 GB) and Oklahoma (902 GB) were next in line.

Filed Under: 4G LTE, AT&T, DAS, NCAA Football, NFL Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Husker Wi-Fi: Nebraska fans use 4.2 TB of Wi-Fi data during Sept. 12 home game

September 21, 2015 by Leave a Comment

It looks like we have an early leader in the (unofficial) college football Wi-Fi usage race, as the University of Nebraska folks are claiming that fans at Memorial Stadium in Lincoln, Neb., used 4.2 terabytes of Wi-Fi data during the Huskers’ Sept. 12 victory over South Alabama.

Thanks to Chad Chisea, IT operations manager for the Huskers and Dan Floyd, Nebraska’s director of IT for athletics, we’ve got some stats and tweets to share — of the 4.2 TB, approximately 3.0 TB was downloaded data and 1.2 was uploaded, according to network stats sent to us via email. But if you look at the embedded tweet below, the numbers that really jump out at us are the 34,439 unique connected devices and the 28,290 peak connections at a single time — those are numbers that rival anything we’ve seen in NFL stadiums, and are dwarfed only by Super Bowl or college playoff championship game numbers.

With 89,822 in attendance to watch Nebraska whup up on South Alabama 48-9, it’s perhaps no surprise that there are pro-type numbers being put up on the Wi-Fi scoreboard. With a top deployment from Cisco and CDW put in last year, the Memorial Stadium Wi-Fi should be on par with any other large football stadium, and so far the numbers from Nebraska look to be proof of that idea. The Huskers also seem to have a good handle on promoting the Wi-Fi network, as witnessed by the two tweets below that direct fans to the network and let them know they also have game-day help available.

We’re looking forward to getting some hard stats from other top college venues — so far we’ve heard anecdotal evidence that the fiber-based network at Texas A&M’s Kyle Field is rocking, but no numbers yet — so send them our way, and let’s see how the stadium networks stack up. Right now it’s Big Red in the lead, but if DAS numbers from AT&T are any indication, there is lots more data being used this year in stadiums so let’s start adding up the scores.

Filed Under: 4G LTE, AT&T, Cisco, DAS, MSR Guides, NCAA Football, 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 Leave a Comment

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

Boingo, Aruba behind new Wi-Fi deployment at Kansas State’s football stadium

August 18, 2015 by Leave a Comment

The WIldcats take the field at Bill Snyder Family Stadium. All photos: Kansas State website. (click on any photo for a larger image)

The WIldcats take the field at Bill Snyder Family Stadium. All photos: Kansas State website. (click on any photo for a larger image)

So far we haven’t seen any press releases but a web-posted letter to Kansas State supporters from Athletic Director John Currie confirms that Boingo Wireless and Aruba Networks are part of a new Wi-Fi and DAS deployment at the Bill Snyder Family Stadium that will have at least 300 antennas of some kind bringing service to the 50,000-seat venue.

Bill Snyder, still the head coach at the stadium that bears his name, will lead the Wildcats into the 2015 football season knowing that fans in Manhattan — Manhattan, Kansas — will now have sufficient bandwidth to stay connected while they cheer on the team. While the letter from AD Currie wasn’t clear on details and specifics — at least not to the MSR level of clarity — it did say that “When you arrive for Fan Appreciation Day this weekend [last weekend] you’ll likely notice a few of the 300-plus new Wi-Fi and Distributed Antenna System (DAS) fixtures being installed around Bill Snyder Family Stadium as we work to address connectivity for cell phones and other personal electronic devices throughout the stadium.” So we’re not sure if that means 300 APs for Wi-Fi and then a DAS, or if that means 300 antenna systems for both. We’ve got messages out to everyone involved, so watch for a follow-up with some more details as they are available.

Screenshot of map on new K-State app.

Screenshot of map on new K-State app.

The letter from Currie went on to say that the network will be in a testing mode the first couple games, and then the school and its new communication partners will move on to bring similar connectivity to Bramlage Coliseum, the K-State hoops arena, before the basketball season starts.

New app as well

K-State also has a new gameday football app, built by the Boulder, Colo.-based Sportslabs, the first big program we’ve heard of that is using Sportslabs. We haven’t yet seen the app in action but according to the K-State website plug it seems like it will have most of the usual bells and whistles, but not anything fancier like instant replays or food ordering. Stay tuned as we get more info.

The K-State deal is a return to the public eye for Boingo, which had a spate of venue announcements a year or so ago and then pulled back out of the spotlight until coming back a bit recently with an NBA announcement. Boingo using Aruba gear is also a new twist for us, but not surprising as HP’s recent acquistion Aruba has been steadily winning new stadium deals and continues to innovate at already-deployed venues (watch for an upcoming report about the temporary on-field Wi-Fi network that Aruba and the San Francisco 49ers deploy for concerts and other events at Levi’s Stadium).

Are you ready for some football?

Are you ready for some football?

Filed Under: 4G LTE, Apps, DAS, Levi's Stadium, NCAA Football, Wi-Fi Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

KC’s Sporting Innovations sues former co-CEO, loses Pac-12 app deal

July 9, 2015 by Leave a Comment

App promo at Stanford football game last fall. All photos: Paul Kapustka, MSR

App promo at Stanford football game last fall. All photos: Paul Kapustka, MSR

From the outside looking in, it’s a bit of strange days going on at the Kansas City-based sports technology developer Sporting Innovations, which recently filed a lawsuit against its former co-CEO for allegedly conspiring to set up a competing firm using Sporting Innovations assets and intellectual property. It was also recently learned that Sporting Innovations’ project to help the Pac-12 develop a game-day app for sports teams is no longer active, after a year-long test with the Stanford University football team that didn’t produce any visible or public results.

Since Sporting Innovations isn’t offering any insight — a company contact replied “no comment” to an email asking for more information on both subjects — we can only guess as to what the business mood is at the company right now. But if you read the detailed report on the lawsuit by Kansas City Star reporter Kasia Kovacs it seems like Sporting Innovations has been plagued by some serious internal strife over the past year.

According to the lawsuit, Sporting Innovations alleges that former co-CEO Asim Pasha and his son Zain (also a Sporting Innovations employee) “began secretly plotting the formation of a competing company” sometime around September of 2014. From the introduction of the lawsuit, more details about the alleged conspiracy, which also allegedly involved a company named Vernalis, which was a contractor to Sporting Innovations:

To do so, they exploited SI’s resources, confidential information and trade secrets, business opportunities, and relationships with commercial partners, including Vernalis Group, Inc. (“Vernalis”), and Nader “Nate” Hanafy (“Hanafy”), Managing Director at Vernalis. Asim and Zain also misused SI’s corporate credit card to incur tens of thousands of dollars in personal expenses. Asim and Zain have refused to provide documentation and receipts related to their improper and extravagant spending.

The lawsuit, which seeks $75,000 in damages and the return of Sporting Innovations assets — including laptops for both Asim Pasha and Zain Pasha, which the company contends were not returned — was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri on June 17, a day after the company fired Asim Pasha. According to the copy of the lawsuit, Sporting Innovations is seeking a jury trial.

Pac-12 app trial is over, no role for Sporting Innovations going forward

Stanford app splash screen showing Uphoria branding

Stanford app splash screen showing Uphoria branding

Last fall, Sporting Innovations seemed to get a boost for its sports-app technology when the Pac-12 and Stanford chose Sporting Innovations’ FAN360 software as the base for a game-day stadium app that was tested in various forms of completion at Stanford home football games. Asim Pasha, then still co-CEO, was quoted in the press release announcing the deal. Sporting Innovations highlighted the deal in interviews last fall, and Sporting Innovations execs were part of a sports innovation conference at Levi’s Stadium that was hosted in part by the Pac-12.

But that deal is now dead after one season, with a Pac-12 representative confirming that the conference is no longer working with Sporting Innovations following last year’s pilot program. At its recent meetings, the conference decided to create its own multimedia rights sales arm, which will lead fan engagement technology projects going forward, though no details of such projects have yet been revealed. However, the GoStanford app, which has a splash screen saying it is powered by Sporting Innovations’ Uphoria platform, is still active, with news updates as recent as last month.

On the Sporting Innovations website, the company has claimed app deals for its technology with several other schools and teams, including Oklahoma State University and the Tampa Bay Lightning of the NHL, among others.

Filed Under: Apps, NCAA Football, Pac-12 Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,
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