Sprint – Page 11

AT&T Park networks averaged 1.24 Terabytes per game during NLDS

October 14, 2014 by Paul Kapustka Leave a Comment

As the San Francisco Giants get set to host the St. Louis Cardinals in Game 3 of the NLCS today (weather pending!) we can be reasonably assured that AT&T Park’s wireless networks will be able to handle whatever load the fans throw at them. According to AT&T, the park’s DAS and Wi-Fi networks carried an average of 1.24 Terabytes of traffic for the two most recent postseason contests, the NLDS games against the Washington Nationals on Oct. 6-7.

According to a recent AT&T local blog post, the DAS network at AT&T Park carried an average of 314 GB of traffic between the two games, with a high of 338 GB on the Oct. 7 game. Remember, these stats only reflect traffic of AT&T customers at the park — the actual total of DAS traffic would include usage from customers of Verizon Wireless, T-Mobile and Sprint, but none of those companies have (ever) reported DAS traffic usage. Still, the AT&T number is pretty impressive all by itself.

On the Wi-Fi side, AT&T said there was an average of 926 GB of data used per game — again, impressive when you consider that AT&T Park is a baseball stadium that only seats about 41,500 folks when it’s sold out. Since the Wi-Fi network is free and open to any wireless service customer, the 926 GB number reflects total data use. Combining the two gives you a figure of 1.24 TB average traffic per game. Now let’s see if Giants fans top that number this week.

UPDATE: We just got some fresh stats from AT&T for Tuesday night’s NLCS game at AT&T Park, and no surprise, more data was consumed. According to AT&T the fans at the Oct. 14 afternoon game used 1.38 TB of total data, with 1,067 GB on Wi-Fi and another 318 GB on the cellular DAS (remember those stats are AT&T customers only on the DAS). We’ll do another roundup after the three games are played this week to get averages.

Filed Under: 4G LTE, AT&T, Baseball, DAS, Major League Baseball, San Francisco Giants, Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon Wireless, Wi-Fi Tagged With: AT&T, AT&T Park, DAS, MLB, Mobile Sports Report, NLCS, Paul Kapustka, San Francisco Giants, Sprint, St. Louis Cardinals, Stadium Wi-Fi, T-Mobile, Verizon Wireless, Wi-Fi

Niners’ home opener tops Super Bowl for Wi-Fi data traffic with 3.3 Terabytes

September 16, 2014 by Paul Kapustka 13 Comments

Fans take pictures of opening kickoff from southwest concourse. Credit, all photos: Paul Kapustka, MSR

The first regular-season home game for the San Francisco 49ers in their new home, Levi’s Stadium, produced more Wi-Fi traffic and far more actual fan-to-network connections than the most-recent Super Bowl, according to statistics from the Niners’ tech team.

Dan Williams, vice president of technology for the 49ers, said the Levi’s Stadium Wi-Fi network carried 3.3 Terabytes of data during Sunday night’s game between the Niners and the Chicago Bears, topping the 3.2 TB mark reported from Super Bowl XLVIII in February. According to Williams, out of the 70,799 that filled Levi’s Stadium Sunday, more than 30,000 fans connected to the Wi-Fi network at some point, with peak usage of 19,000 fans all connecting at one time occurring just before the 5:30 p.m. local time kickoff. According to the Super Bowl stats, the peak number of fans on Wi-Fi at that game at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey was 13,500.

“We’re pretty excited by Sunday,” said Williams, who said that the Wi-Fi network stood up well even under peak data transfer rates of 3.1 Gbps right before kickoff, and another 2.6 Gbps peak around 7:30 p.m. Around the peaks, network traffic stayed “well over 1 gig per second for three and a half hours,” Williams said.

North scoreboard screen at Levi’s Stadium.

During the Niners’ first preseason game against the Denver Broncos, the Levi’s Stadium Wi-Fi network carried 2.13 TB of data, and during the Aug. 24 preseason game against San Diego there was another 1.96 TB of Wi-Fi data. The figures do not include any reporting from the stadium’s DAS network, which carries cellular traffic from AT&T, Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile customer. If preseason games are any indication, Williams expects to see numbers in the terabyte range for DAS traffic as well.

The Wi-Fi numbers from Sunday showed that fans quickly figured out a name change in the network name (or SSID). During preseason games, the Wi-Fi network was identified as “Levi’s Stadium” in a device list of available networks; on Sunday the free stadium network used the name “xfinitywifi,” reflecting the brand of Wi-Fi sponsor Comcast. Some fans might have been confused since the “xfinitywifi” SSID is the same one used by Comcast for its public Wi-Fi networks.

“Some folks may have been scratching their heads,” said Williams. “We changed the name last Monday before the opener.”

Replay app gets 7,800 views

As previously reported by MSR, the instant replay feature of the Levi’s Stadium app had its debut Sunday, and according to Williams fans watched 7,800 replays via the app. The top replay view was of the early touchdown pass from Niners QB Colin Kaepernick to Michael Crabtree, which Williams said was viewed more than 1,000 times.

Fans on southwest concourse take photos of live action.

As MSR reported, the replay feature was somewhat limited in functionality, not working at all until late in the first half and then only offering the last two plays plus some scoring highlights for viewing. Previously, team executives had said the replay feature would offer multiple camera angles and multiple replay reviews all at the same time. According to Williams, more features will be added to the replay function in the near future.

“It’s not the finished product, by any means,” Williams said. “You’ll see some more polish on it.”

The most-used feature in the stadium app, Williams said, continues to be the food and beverage features, which allow fans to either purchase concessions for express line pickup, or to have their orders delivered to their seats. Williams said the Niners delivered 2,100 food orders to fans Sunday, the most for the Niners so far.

Perhaps the best news for Williams was the lack of complaints about the wireless network, which the team had asked fans to tweet about if they were experiencing problems. Though some fans with older devices that only work on the 2.4 GHz wireless bands might not see the same speeds as those with newer devices (which use the more roomy 5 GHz bands), Williams said his team only got a couple complaints about network issues, and one of those was solved before they could respond.

“Overall it just was a really good [wireless] experience,” said Williams, who always ends by noting that networks are never completely finished products. But with its Super Bowl-beating performance Sunday, the Levi’s Stadium network appears in midseason form.

“I think we’re close,” Williams said.

View from the north porch

Filed Under: 4G LTE, AT&T, DAS, Denver Broncos, NFL, Seattle Seahwaks, Sprint, Super Bowl, T-Mobile, Verizon Wireless, Wi-Fi Tagged With: AT&T, Chicago Bears, DAS, Extreme Networks, food ordering to seats, Instant Replay, instant replay app, Levi's Stadium, Levi's Stadium app, Mobile Sports Report, Paul Kapustka, San Francisco 49ers, Stadium Wi-Fi, Super Bowl, Verizon Wireless, Wi-Fi

Stadium Tech Report: DAS Group Professionals makes a name for itself with Levi’s Stadium DAS

September 11, 2014 by Paul Kapustka 3 Comments

DAS antennas hanging from a Levi’s Stadium overhang. Credit, all Levi’s photos: Paul Kapsutka, MSR

If you look around at the walls, ceilings and overhangs at Levi’s Stadium, it’s hard to miss the small square boxes with the off-white color and a “DGP” logo in one corner. While the wires hanging out the back of each box make it an easy guess that the equipment has something to do with wireless networks, even many industry insiders may not know the company behind the boxes and the three-letter acronym.

Meet DAS Group Professionals, the Bay Area firm in charge of deploying a distributed antenna system (DAS) to make sure your cell phone gets a good signal at San Francisco 49ers games and any other event inside the 68,500-seat Levi’s Stadium. And while you might not be familiar with DGP, rest assured the company is extremely familiar with cellular deployments for large public venues, having installed similar DAS networks for airports, casinos and hotels, and even for San Francisco’s BART train system. Of course, most of that work was done when the company was called Forza Telecom, before changing its name to DGP earlier this year, another reason why “DGP” may not have rung any bells.

“It may appear like we just fell out of the sky, but we’ve actually built quite a few [DAS] systems,” said Steve Dutto, president of DGP, in a recent phone interview. “We’ve got years of experience.”

DAS antennas above a food stand

DAS: The Rodney Dangerfield of stadium connectivity

One thing that keeps firms like DGP in the shadows is the relative obscurity of DAS itself. While most people generally understand how cell phones work — you turn on your phone, and it connects to an antenna somewhere on a tower or rooftop — in crowded public facilities like stadiums, traditional cellular networks with towers several miles apart can’t handle the concentrated capacity. To provide connectivity for areas with large crowds, the latest tactic is to deploy a DAS, a network of lots of smaller antennas. Originally deployed in places like office buildings, hotels and convention centers, DAS is rapidly gaining favor in stadiums and arenas, helping to alleviate the “no signal” problem that has cropped up in many venues the past few years.

And while stadium Wi-Fi gets lots of headlines whenever it gets deployed — probably thanks again to the widespread understanding of how Wi-Fi works — there are already far more DAS deployments in stadiums than Wi-Fi, mainly because cellular carriers will pay almost all the associated costs of a DAS buildout to make sure their customers get a signal. According to our most recent 2014 State of the Stadium survey, 71.4 percent of our respondents said they had a full DAS at their facility, while only 35.7 percent had fan-facing Wi-Fi.

Steve Dutto, president, DGP

How does a DAS work? Usually, either a major cellular carrier or a third-party “neutral” host like DGP will build out the antenna infrastructure, which includes many small antennas and then cables to bring the connections back to a wiring room or data center. There, cellular carriers install their own cell-tower back-end gear to authenticate customers and to provide a connection to the company networks and the Internet. Since it’s in the cellular carriers’ interest to keep their customers connected (and using billable minutes and data), carriers will often pay the full cost of a DAS infrastructure by building and running it themselves. In the case like Levi’s, where DGP is the “neutral host,” DGP builds the infrastructure and then charges cellular carriers to use it.

Such deals are rarely publicized, and Dutto would not comment on how much each carrier was being charged to use the Levi’s DAS — though industry gossip has the figure somewhere around $5 million per carrier per year. And just like fight club, for many deployments the first rule of DAS is that you don’t talk about DAS, because no cellular carrier ever wants to admit that its network might need help. So just like Rodney Dangerfield, DAS often doesn’t get a lot of public respect. But at Levi’s Stadium and many other sports and entertainment venues, DAS is a booming business that would be sorely missed if it wasn’t there.

The ‘dream and the nightmare’ of building the Levi’s DAS

Now that DGP’s 700-plus antenna DAS deployment is up and running at Levi’s, Dutto can breathe a small bit easier. While the network is good business for the company and an obvious prominent calling card for the future, the aggressive deployment timeframe probably isn’t something Dutto is eager to repeat.

“Levi’s Stadium was both a dream and a nightmare [for DGP],” Dutto said, due in part both to the Niners’ aggressive performance expectations and the rapid buildout schedule. Of course, DGP was somewhat used to working quickly with the Niners — when the company put a DAS in Candlestick Park back in 2012 to solve that stadium’s legendary lack of connectivity, Dutto said it was deployed “in about 90 days.”

The success of the Candlestick deployment, Dutto said, led to the Niners offering the Levi’s DAS gig to DGP. With it, however, came the need to match the team’s out-front statements about how the stadium was going to be the best ever in terms of wireless connectivity. And with many people not knowing or not bothering to switch their phones to Wi-Fi, the Levi’s DAS, like most stadium DAS deployments, would probably handle most of the wireless connections.

Door sign for head end equipment room at Levi’s Stadium (there are many of these)

“We knew that it needed to be significantly better than anywhere else, right at the launch,” Dutto said. While the late addition of an early August soccer game at Levi’s pushed deployment schedules ahead even faster, Dutto said in the end it helped DGP overall.

“I wasn’t a big fan of getting ready for that date [the Aug. 2 soccer game was Levi’s first event] but it was a blessing in disguise,” Dutto said. “The trouble with a network is that you can’t really test it until everyone shows up. We got some good data from that event.”

After the “daily and nightly” discussions with the Niners’ tech team about antenna placements and other matters, the DAS network performed well when it mattered, during the Niners’ two preseason games on Aug. 17 and 24. According to a traffic report from the stadium tech team, the DAS network carried a combined 1.02 terabytes of wireless traffic for the two preseason games, which is on par with activity seen at big events in the past, like Super Bowls. According to Dutto DGP’s internal tests showed that few, if any, calls were dropped or didn’t connect.

“We’re at 98 percent [network performance] already, without [the network] being fully optimized,” Dutto said.

RF challenges and too many iPhone 4 customers

While many of the stadium’s Wi-Fi antennas are well hidden — including the ones in boxes under seats — the DAS antennas are a bit more prominent, especially if you are near where the first overhang comes close to the seats.

“Unfortunately, with Levi’s exposed steel-beam construction, if you want the DAS to work, you’re going to see it,” Dutto said. “It’s hard to be stealthy in there.”

And in many cases there isn’t just one but instead two DGP antennas side by side, which reflects the company’s decision to actually build two parallel DAS systems to better accomodate more wireless carriers. According to Dutto, AT&T and T-Mobile are based on one system, while Verizon Wireless, Sprint and public safety communications are handled by the other one. Currently, all the carriers are live on the DAS except for Sprint, which is still in the process of installing its back-end equipment.

DAS antenna in “Faithful Mile” area

One of the biggest challenges for DGP, Dutto said, comes from outside the stadium, and not inside. Like other open-air stadiums located in city cores, Levi’s Stadium faces significant interference from cellular antennas on nearby office building rooftops, as well as from the Santa Clara Convention Center right across the street.

“Less than a half mile from Levi’s you can see seven different rooftop cell sites,” said Dutto, who said the flat, open terrain around the stadium increases the ability for those signals to interfere with the stadium DAS deployment. Target Field in Minneapolis had some similar problems with cell antennas on nearby office buildings.

“We’ve done a lot of work with the carriers to adjust their macro networks around the stadium,” Dutto said. “We’ll do more of that as we go, and expect it to get better.”

And while Levi’s Wi-Fi network has shown itself to be incredibly robust, Dutto said that cellular connectivity over the DAS might be even faster than Wi-Fi in many instances, especially if fans have later-model phones with 4G LTE.

Even though Dutto said DGP’s testing recorded download speeds of up to 200 Mbps — and 65 Mbps sustained — he acknowledged that many Levi’s patrons might never see those kinds of numbers unless they snap up some of the new iPhone 6 models introduced by Apple this week. According to network stats collected by DGP during the preseason games, a lot of fans may be ready for an upgrade.

“There’s a lot more iPhone 4 users out there than we thought,” Dutto said.

Filed Under: 4G LTE, Apple, AT&T, DAS, iPhone, MSR Guides, NFL, Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon Wireless, Wi-Fi Tagged With: AT&T, BART, Candlestick Park, DAS, DAS Group Professionals, DGP, Forza Telecom, Levi's Stadium, Mobile Sports Report, Paul Kapustka, San Francisco 49ers, Sprint, stadium Wi-Fii, Steve Dutto, T-Mobile, Verizon Wireless, Wi-Fi

Stadium Tech Report: Minnesota Twins tap InSite and TE Connectivity to get DAS ready for All-Star Game

July 15, 2014 by Paul Kapustka 6 Comments

Target Field, the downtown home of the Minnesota Twins. Credit: Minnesota Twins

Target Field, the downtown home of the Minnesota Twins. Credit all photos: Minnesota Twins

Even at a new stadium, getting the wireless network right is a constantly changing target. And for 4-year-old Target Field in Minneapolis, that meant an upgrade to the DAS not too long after the facility opened its doors.

“Nobody will ever have the perfect [network] install, and that’s part of the fun of it,” said John Avenson, vice president of infrastructure for the Minnesota Twins baseball club, in a phone interview with MSR. “The problem is not solvable as in, one year and you’re done. You need to be continuously improving.”

For the Twins, improving cellular connectivity was especially important since this year the club and the stadium will host baseball’s midsummer classic, the All-Star game. Thanks to help from InSite Wireless and DAS gear from TE Connectivity, Target Field’s DAS should be able to handle not just the overall growth in Twins fans’ wireless needs, but also the extra demands of a special event and all the selfies that go along with it.

“Fortunately, InSite and the carriers have been able to react quickly, and we should be ready for the test of the All-Star game,” said Dan Starkey, director for ballpark development and planning, in the same interview. “We’ll be ready to fully test the system.”

Wi-Fi and DAS, a perfect double play

Dan Starkey, director for ballpark development and planning

As a new facility, Target Field was ahead of the curve when it came to Wi-Fi. On opening day the park had free Wi-Fi service for fans, with 225 access points initially available. “Back then that was a big number,” Avenson said. And while some carrier execs have been voicing an opinion that DAS is all that’s needed in a stadium, Avenson isn’t convinced.

“At this point you need both Wi-Fi and DAS,” he said.

Though the Twins do a good job of promoting the Wi-Fi service, most fans in stadiums everywhere usually default first to a cellular connection, either because they don’t know about the Wi-Fi, or don’t want to be bothered with the process or aren’t sure how to connect. Since people still think they should be able to send pictures or watch videos over a cellular connection, even at a crowded ballpark, that means the DAS – the Distributed Antenna System – needs to keep pace with all the smartphones and tablets being used.

“Some fans put their phones away [when they come to the stadium] but the younger crowd does not do that,” Avenson said. “Nothing interrupts their need for a good [wireless] experience.”

According to Avenson, even before the facility opened the IT team new that they wanted a neutral host partner to lead the DAS effort.

“It just made sense to us,” said Avenson of having a neutral host DAS supplier, since as he said, carriers can be like siblings who have to share a bedroom. “InSite really enables the carriers, so they don’t have to fight with each other [over technology deployments].

Verizon Wireless and AT&T, the two biggest cellular carriers in the U.S., were on the neutral host DAS at the start, and were later joined by Sprint and T-Mobile. And even though the park is fairly new, Avenson said everyone involved realized quickly that wireless demands were growing, meaning that an upgrade was needed sooner rather than later.

According to the team, the most recent upgrades were to add MIMO capability for 1900 and AWS 2100 MHz bands, as well as adding four additional sectors in the bowl for AT&T. The new DAS can also support newer 4G LTE technologies, the Twins said.

“It’s just part of the evolution of DAS,” said Starkey. “Once we realized we needed additional coverage and capacity, InSite and the carriers acted quickly.”

Suite view of Target Field

The downtown difference

Like many other stadiums and large public facilities, Target Field had to be creative in finding space for the DAS head end equipment.

“In 2008 and 2009, we thought we’d fit it [the DAS head end] in a corner but it grew to a larger space and then that wasn’t big enough,” said Avenson, who added that AT&T and Verizon each have 10 to 12 cabinets of back-end gear for their DAS operations. “When the building was being built in 2008, the architects were not aware that we’d be needing more space. It’s amazing how much space and power a DAS takes at the head end.”

Adding to the complexity of the Target Field deployment is the fact that the field is in the middle of downtown Minneapolis, with large office buildings peeking over the roof of the stadium. According to Avenson, carriers and the team had to perform a series of reconfigurations to antennas both inside the park and out, so that the macro metro cellular network didn’t interfere with the DAS network inside the stadium.

“When the macro network wants to invade [the stadium] you have to push the macro network out,” said Avenson. “If you’re Miller Park [the baseball field in Milwaukee] and you have a big parking lot around the stadium you can control your own destiny. Parks in the middle of cities have a much different challenge.”

Editor’s note: This profile was originally published on May 1, 2014. It is also included in our Stadium Tech Report for Q2 2014, which you can download for free from our site.

Filed Under: 4G LTE, All Star Game, AT&T, Baseball, DAS, Major League Baseball, Minnesota Twins, MSR Guides, Sprint, T-Mobile, Wi-Fi Tagged With: All Star Game, AT&T, DAS, Major League Baseball, Minneapolis, Minnesota Twins, Mobile Sports Report, Paul Kapustka, Sprint, Stadium Wi-Fi, T-Mobile, Target Field, Verizon Wireless, Wi-Fi

Stadium Tech Report: Niners President Marathe confident that Levi’s Stadium network, apps will deliver as promised

May 30, 2014 by Paul Kapustka 3 Comments

Niners president Paraag Marathe (center) at Intersport Activation Summit panel.

So, Paraag Marathe — will the network at Levi’s Stadium live up to its considerable pre-launch billing and be ready to go when the stadium opens later this year?

“It better work, since we’ve been talking about it,” said Marathe Friday, during a panel discussion at the Intersport Activation Summit presented by SportsBusiness Journal/Daily in San Francisco. “We better be right.”

Even though the short history of in-stadium networks suggests that any new endeavor be launched with words of caution, Marathe and the San Francisco 49ers are instead confident — very confident — that their new stadium will launch with a network second to none, and have game-changing services like food and beverage delivery to seats and on-demand instant replay that will redefine the game-day experience.

Paraag Marathe, president, San Francisco 49ers

In both his panel discussion at the Ritz-Carlton hotel and in an additional interview afterward, Marathe provided some additional details about plans the Niners have talked about previously for the technology features at the new stadium, which is located in Santa Clara, Calif., smack dab in the middle of Silicon Valley. Though Marathe said the stadium’s location — quite literally next door to several high-tech company campuses — made technology “part of the DNA,” he stressed Friday that the Niners are seeking to use technology to improve the fan experience, and not just to have cool stuff.

“It’s not technology for technology’s sake,” Marathe said. “It’s to enhance being at the game.”

But he did add that the stadium’s Wi-Fi network will be the base for much of the innovation.

Wi-Fi is ‘the master key’

An under-the-seat access point. Credit: Aruba Networks

The Wi-Fi network, which Marathe said “will absolutely be working” when the park opens, is “the master key that unlocks everything,” he said. Currently being built with Wi-Fi access point gear from Aruba Networks and back-end network equipment from Brocade Networks, the Levi’s Stadium Wi-Fi network will also have twin 10-Gigabit broadband pipes provided by Comcast to provide what Marathe said will be throughput “30 times more than any other stadium.”

Marathe said the Wi-Fi network is being built with what he calls a “spider web” of access points, though neither the Niners nor Aruba have yet said just how many access points will be used to create the network. There will also be a neutral-host cellular DAS at the stadium, built by DAS Group Professionals (DGP). Already, DGP has signed up the “big four” carriers of AT&T, Verizon Wireless, Sprint and T-Mobile, to use the DAS at the stadium.

What will the networks be used for? Marathe outlined four main points of technology innovation during his talk, including high-definition, on-demand replays via the new Niners stadium app; in-seat delivery of food and beverages to every seat; way-finding features to perform tasks like locating friends, finding parking spots, and to tell which bathroom lines are shortest; and paperless tickets, based on RFID and near-field communication to fans’ devices. Of the four, the replay idea and the food-delivery service stand out as massive technical and industrial challenges.

Promised: Better replays than those on TV

If there is one promise that has many in the stadium technology industry shaking their heads, it’s Marathe’s pledge of Levi’s being able to deliver “better replays than what the coaches are seeing,” since team coaches only get to see replays provided by the network broadcasts. The Niners, Marathe said, will have “a massive [internal] production crew” working on the replay feature, since replays not only need to be picked out of the video stream, they also need to be coded to work over the Internet and to be delivered to handsets. Though Marathe admitted that the video quality may dip a bit below true HD if a lot of fans try to watch replays at once, he told the conference crowd that the Niners’ stadium app is going to deliver “HD, slo-mo [replays] within seconds after a big play.”

While other stadiums, like Barclays Center in the NBA, use technologies like Cisco’s StadiumVision Mobile to deliver separate “channels” of live video and replays, Marathe said the Niners’ app will allow fans to choose their own replays and when they want to watch them. “If you have a [replay] channel, you’re subject to whatever is on that channel,” Marathe said.

The food-delivery feature, Marathe said, is more than putting a menu in an app — “it’s an immense industrial engineering exercise,” he said, to figure out things like how many runners are needed and when and how food needs to be prepared. In addition to food delivery — an option he said will be available to every seat in the 68,500-seat stadium — the Niners will also have “express pickup” lanes for digitally placed orders at concession stands, an idea that Marathe said helps eliminate or significantly reduce two of the three things that make concession interactions a time-consuming act.

“There’s decision time, transaction time, and preparation time,” Marathe said. “If you can eliminate two of three variables, that’s a few more minutes fans have to watch the game.” Waiting until fans show up at a stand to prepare the food will help keep the order fresh, he added.

Wayfinding, paperless tickets and the 9-Nerds

If there’s one idea that’s already gotten a lot of press, it’s the plan to have wayfinding technology assist features like the one that will let fans know how long the bathroom lines are. Marathe said the idea was to make it simple — “red light, yellow light, green light” — to let fans know that if they have to go, it might be faster to try the bathroom one section over.

“We’re really just trying to be smart,” said Marathe. Other wayfinding apps might include a parking-spot locator, or a friend-finder feature.

The fourth area where Marathe wants Levi’s to innovate in is paperless ticketing, which he said wouldn’t be 100 percent this year but it will eventually get there. A future scenario described by Marathe might use RFID or near-field communications to let fans simply walk through a gate without having to show a ticket or even a bar code to be scanned. Some ski areas, like Aspen and Vail in Colorado, already use such technology to let skiers get on lifts without having to show anyone their RFID-equipped lift tickets.

“The idea is to have greeters who can actually greet you” when you walk in, and perhaps extend a personal offer for discount goods purchases or seat upgrades, Marathe said. “It’s a more human interaction,” fueled by technology.

Wi-Fi coach in the stands at Gillette Stadium. Credit: Extreme Networks

Finally, to help fans figure out how to use the new network and apps, Marathe confirmed plans previously reported by Mobile Sports Report to hire a crew of “network coaches” to roam the stands. According to Marathe the coaches will be called “9 Nerds” (say it quickly) and will likely be college students, dressed in what Marathe called “Poindexter outfits.” The Niners are looking to hire 150 such network helpers, which would be the largest such crew we’ve heard of in the stadium networking marketplace.

“They’ll stand out,” Marathe promised.

Lots of network use — and a team ready for its launch

With all the hype about the network, Marathe expects that Levi’s Stadium wireless usage will far eclipse that at other stadiums, where often far fewer than half of the fans in attendance actually ever use things like Wi-Fi or stadium apps.

“Forget 10 percent [fan network use], we’re going to see something higher,” Marathe said. Even people who don’t have digital devices, he said, will probably borrow one “just to bring it to Levi’s to test it out.”

When asked why his team was so confident — in an industry where under-promising seems to be a sensible way to go — Marathe said that both the Silicon Valley heritage and the greenfield nature of the building gives the Niners and Levi’s a technological edge.

“Five years ago, we put together a kind of think tank with VCs and design people, and thought about what would be useful [at a new stadium], well before we ever put a shovel in the ground,” Marathe said. And even though the Niners’ CTO left the team earlier this year, Marathe is confident that his crew of 25 engineers (which he said also still gets some consulting help from the departed CTO, Kunal Malik) will deliver the network and apps as promised.

Having advanced technology in the new stadium, Marathe said, “was our mandate — the DNA of the building is all these tech companies that are around us. It’s who we are.”

Filed Under: 4G LTE, Apps, AT&T, Cisco, Comcast, DAS, MSR Guides, NFL, Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon Wireless, Wi-Fi Tagged With: Aruba Networks, Brocade Networks, Cal, California, Cisco, Comcast, DAS, DAS Group Professionals, Levi's Stadium, Mobile Sports Report, NFL, Paraag Marathe, San Francisco 49ers, Santa Clara, stadium apps, Stadium Wi-Fi, Stanford, Super Bowl 50, video replays, Wi-Fi

Stadium Tech Report: Upgrades keep San Francisco Giants and AT&T Park at front of stadium DAS and Wi-Fi league

May 29, 2014 by Paul Kapustka 4 Comments

Outside AT&T Park. All photos, Paul Kapustka, Mobile Sports Report. (Click on any photo for larger image)

What’s it like when the best-connected park in Major League Baseball loses its cellular mojo for a month? This winter the San Francisco Giants found out how fun it isn’t to revisit the days of “no signal,” when a DAS upgrade meant about 30 days of little to no connectivity inside AT&T Park.

“It was painful,” said Bill Schlough, senior vice president and chief information officer for the Giants, during a recent in-person interview at AT&T Park. Though no big sporting events took place during the Feburary-to-March overhaul of the main AT&T distributed antenna system (DAS) head end, Schlough said during that time many of the roughly 200 to 300 employees who work at AT&T Park every day were forced to find daylight to make a call, just like the bad old days before DAS.

“We never really knew how much we rely on DAS [for internal operations], but having it down really drove it home,” said Schlough. The good news on the DAS front was that once the upgrade was complete, the Giants had a lot more space in their previously cramped head-end headquarters. According to Schlough, the new back-end equipment for AT&T’s DAS operations takes up less than 50 percent of the previous gear footprint, room that is likely to be filled with gear from yet another carrier slated to join the AT&T neutral-host DAS later this season.

Painful, but worth it.

Second major upgrade in 5 years of DAS

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

If you’re not familiar with a neutral DAS like the one at AT&T Park, it’s an implementation where there is one set of antennas and internal wiring, and then a “head end” where each carrier puts its cellular-specific networking gear, equipment that identifies and authorizes callers and then connects those calls or messages to fiber links back out to the Internet and beyond. As the lead provider of DAS and as the namesake sponsor of the park it makes sense that AT&T has the biggest DAS requirement on site. Verizon, which has been on the AT&T Park DAS for two years now, actually houses most of its head end gear in a separate facility nearby, and links to the AT&T Park system via fiber.

Part of this year’s DAS renovations include a new room specifically being built for Sprint’s DAS equipment, a sort of re-arrange-the-house construction project that saw the ballpark wall off half its painting services workshop to make space for Sprint’s gear. During our visit we saw workers putting up the racks that will hold the Sprint head end gear, as thick fiber cables snaked in the doorway.

Additional carrier(s) would likely be placed in the same room as AT&T and Verizon, on floor space that used to hold AT&T racks before those were un-drilled from the concrete floor and new racks were installed during the February-March overhaul. According to Schlough, the DAS upgrade (which required minimal tweaks to the previously installed DAS antennas) was the second major rip-and-replace action in the 5 years the DAS has been live at AT&T Park.

DAS performance improves over time; Wi-Fi is good too

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

Though Wi-Fi services in stadiums gets a lot of technology headlines, in many big arenas the DAS is an equal workhorse, connecting people who either don’t know how to or prefer not to connect to Wi-Fi services. Through the first 18 games of the 2014 season, Schlough said AT&T Park was seeing average AT&T traffic loads on the DAS of 150 Megabytes on the download side (fans requesting data) and 50 MB on the upload side (fans sending data). Figures for the Wi-Fi network (which is free to all customers) for the same span of games was an average of 400 MB download, 200 MB upload per game.

Schlough said performance stats for the AT&T portion of the DAS have improved vastly since the distributed antenna system was first put in.

“Just four or five years ago, 97 percent [connection rate] was actually relatively respectable,” Schlough said. Now, Schlough said network connect rates regularly hover in the “four nines” region, with a recent report showing a success rate of 99.9925 percent of all calls or texts going through.

The Wi-Fi network at AT&T Park, the first in any major sporting arena and still among the world’s most expansive, has more than 1,200 access points, many of which are now located beneath the seats. According to Schlough this coming offseason will likely represent the final phase of a stadium-wide deployment effort for the new, under-seat access points, which are installed symmetrically under the seats that are out in the open air.

Giants senior VP and CIO Bill Schlough, at the office

Since AT&T Park doesn’t have many railings alongside the seats “in the bowl” or those in the upper decks, the under-the-seat APs were the only choice to extend Wi-Fi connectivity, he said. Though the box-like antennas do take away some under-seat storage area from approximately every 40th seat, Schlough said there haven’t been many complaints from fans about the gear.

What he has seen, however, are many compliments about the network services, especially from fellow professionals in the sports IT world.

“I get friends in the business who come here and send me texts with Speedtests attached, showing how great the Wi-Fi is,” said Schlough. My own ad hoc testing before our interview (albeit during non-game hours) showed speeds of greater than 40 Mbps for Wi-Fi just outside the park near McCovey Cove, and speeds of 25+ Mbps just outside the main gate. Schlough also showed us some of the new iBeacon antennas, which are being tested at MLB parks this summer to provide near-field communication marketing opportunities, like automatically checking fans in to the official At Bat app when they pass by a beacon. It’s just another way the best-connected park in baseball seeks to continue to improve the fan experience.

According to Schlough, the connectivity at AT&T Park doesn’t hurt when it comes to ticket sales.

“People do come here more frequently, I think, because they know there will be good connectivity,” said Schlough. “There’s no compromise. I do think that’s part of why we’re currently riding the third longest sellout streak in MLB history.”

MORE PHOTOS BELOW — CLICK ON IMAGES TO SEE LARGER VERSION

Can you find the iBeacon in the bowels of AT&T Park? It’s the small grey box to the left of the other antenna.

Sprint’s new DAS room at AT&T Park.

A close-up of the under-seat AP. Each AP requires holes drilled through concrete to provide wiring access. APs are weather-sealed, according to the Giants.

Bill Schlough’s “old phones” collection. How many of these can you identify?

Filed Under: 4G LTE, AT&T, Baseball, Cisco, DAS, Major League Baseball, MSR Guides, San Francisco Giants, Sprint, Verizon Wireless, Wi-Fi Tagged With: 4G LTE, At Bat 2014, AT&T, AT&T Park, DAS, Major League Baseball, MLB, MLBAM, Mobile Sports Report, San Francisco Giants, Sprint, Stadium Wi-Fi, under seat Wi-Fi, Verizon Wireless, Wi-Fi