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Keeping the Wi-Fi hidden: AT&T Stadium perfects the art of Wi-Fi AP concealment

October 20, 2015 by Leave a Comment

Wi-Fi antennas visible under the 'shroud' covering the outside of the overhang at AT&T Stadium. Photo: Dallas Cowboys (Click on any photo for a larger image)

Wi-Fi antennas visible under the ‘shroud’ covering the outside of the overhang at AT&T Stadium. Photo: Dallas Cowboys (Click on any photo for a larger image)

Since they like to do everything big in Texas, it’s no surprise that the IT team at AT&T Stadium has taken the art of Wi-Fi access point concealment to new heights.

To just above the first and second seating levels of the stadium, that is.

Even though the venue has more Wi-Fi APs than any sports stadium we’ve ever heard of, trying to find any of the 1,900 permanently installed APs is a tough task, thanks to measures like the fiberglass shrouds that circle the stadium just above the first and second seating levels. Underneath those custom-built coverings are numerous Wi-Fi APs, DAS antennas and even cameras, all contributing to the high level of connectivity inside AT&T Stadium while remaining invisible to the visiting fan’s eyes.

“The philosophy throughout the stadium is for a clean, stark look,” said John Winborn, chief information officer for the Dallas Cowboys Football Club, which is the primary tenant of the venue. “That’s a high standard, and that is a real challenge for us when it comes to Wi-Fi and DAS.”

In just about every stadium network deployment we write about, concealment and aesthetics are always one of the top concerns, especially when it comes to Wi-Fi access points and DAS antennas. For some reason, the physical appearance of an obvious piece of technology evokes strong reactions, even as other necessary structural items are ignored.

(Editor’s note: This story is an excerpt from our most recent Stadium Tech Report, the PRO FOOTBALL ISSUE, which is available for FREE DOWNLOAD right now from our site. In the report our editorial coverage includes a profile of the new Wi-Fi network at Green Bay’s Lambeau Field and team-by-team profiles of Wi-Fi and DAS deployments at all 31 NFL stadiums. Get your copy today!)

Under-seat Wi-Fi AP at AT&T Stadium. Photo: Dallas Cowboys

Under-seat Wi-Fi AP at AT&T Stadium. Photo: Dallas Cowboys

A clean, sleek look at the house that Jerry built

As one anonymous commentator at this summer’s SEAT conference noted, “stadium supervisors don’t ever care about seeing a 4-inch pipe, but leave one antenna out and they go crazy.” And whoever that stadium person is, he or she probably has a kindred soul in Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones.

An unseen antenna is Jerry Jones’ favorite kind. Winborn said that AT&T Stadium embraces design in all things visible, noting that the “clean look” idea extends to advertising inside the seating bowl, where the only permanent signs are located in the end zone areas.

“We’re very conscious of the aesthetics here,” Winborn said. “Everyone here sees the benefit of what a great looking building can be. And it all starts with [Jerry] Jones.” Jones’ ideas, Winborn said, “are a major influence on everything we do.”

What that means when it comes to Wi-Fi is that while the stadium always aims to be the best-connected venue around – for this football season, AT&T Stadium will have 1,900+ permanent Wi-Fi APs and another 100 or so available for temporary placements – it also aims to hide the physical gear as much as possible. In suites and hallways there is the natural solution of putting antennas behind ceiling panels, but in the seating bowl, Winborn said, “we don’t have a lot of areas to hide them. We’ve had to become pretty clever about ways to hide APs.”

Two years ago, when the stadium’s AP count was going up from 750 to 1,250, the idea came about to design a custom fiberglass “shroud” that would circle the arena on the front of the overhangs above the first and second seating levels.

A row shot of the under-seat APs. Photo: Dallas Cowboys

A row shot of the under-seat APs. Photo: Dallas Cowboys

“We’re very conscious of the aesthetics here,” Winborn said. “Everyone here sees the benefit of what a great looking building can be.

Winborn said one of the IT staff members had contacts in the manufacturing world, which helped the Cowboys build a slighly convex design that wouldn’t be readily apparent to the untrained eye, yet be big enough to house Wi-Fi and DAS gear all the way around the bowl.

Winborn said the shroud and its underlying gear were installed during one of the recent off-seasons, taking about a couple months – and the final result was so good that Winborn says he needs to use a laser pointer to show interested parties exactly where the equipment shroud sits. Since it’s fiberglass the shroud is somewhat easy to move to allow administration and maintenance of the equipment, but the seamless flow of the structure around the bowl may just be the most elegant AP hiding strategy in the short history of stadium Wi-Fi.

But even with the shrouds there was still a need for more new placements, especially in the middle of the open seating areas. So last year the AT&T Stadium team started deploying under-seat AP enclosures, working with design teams at the AT&T Foundry program to build a custom unit that is much smaller and unobtrusive than other under-seat AP enclosures currently in use.

“We worked with the AT&T Foundry and went through [testing] about a half-dozen models,” Winborn said, before finally arriving at a design that worked well and stayed small. “It’s about the size of a small cigar box,” said Winborn of the under-seat APs, 300 of which were installed in the 100-level seating last year. Another 250 are being installed for this year up in the 300-level seating, he said.

Winborn credited the early use of under-seat APs by the IT team at AT&T Park in San Francisco as a welcome guide.

Here's the big bowl that needs to be filled with Wi-Fi. Photo: Paul Kapustka / MSR

Here’s the big bowl that needs to be filled with Wi-Fi. Photo: Paul Kapustka / MSR

“I talked to the Giants and Bill [Schlough, the Giants’ CIO] and had my concerns” about under-seat APs, Winborn said. “But after they did it and had only one complaint in 2 years, that raised my comfort level.”

Like the Giants’ under-seat APs, the ones in AT&T Stadium are designed to be as maintenance-free as possible, so that they can be steam washed and not harmed by spills or any other physical interactions. Winborn said the Cowboys have even started putting sealant and paint over the top of the under-seat APs, “so they look just like a bump.”

With 1,900 to 2,000 APs available, it might seem like the AT&T Stadium IT crew has enough APs for now, so they can relax a bit when it comes to finding new ways to hide Wi-Fi gear. But Winborn knows the next surge is probably right around the corner (including early results from this season showing 4+ terabytes of Wi-Fi use).

“Everything we are giving the fans [in Wi-Fi bandwidth] they are gobbling it up, pretty quickly,” Winborn said.

Filed Under: 4G LTE, AT&T, Cisco, Dallas Cowboys, DAS, NFL, Wi-Fi 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: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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

September 11, 2015 by 4 Comments

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

Stadium Tech Report: Kauffman Stadium gets a Royal Wi-Fi Upgrade

June 30, 2015 by Leave a Comment

Kansas City's Kauffman Stadium, during last year's World Series. Photo: MLB Photos

Kansas City’s Kauffman Stadium, during last year’s World Series. Photo: MLB Photos (click on any picture for a larger image)

In addition to being good at baseball last fall, the Kansas City Royals were a little bit lucky, too – especially when their park’s new Wi-Fi network got installed just before the Royals began their historic postseason run.

While no team knows for sure if it can plan ahead for postseason play, the fact that Major League Baseball was able to complete its install of a Wi-Fi network at Kauffman Stadium last August ensured that the playoff and World Series crowds in Kansas City had high-bandwidth connectivity, finishing the season with a night that saw more than 2 terabytes of wireless traffic inside the stadium’s famed curved structures.

“The timing [of the installation] was somewhat fortuitous,” said Brian Himstedt, the Kansas City Royals’ senior director for information systems, who confirmed that plans for Wi-Fi were in motion long before the Royals gained their wild- card spot. According to Himstedt, the Royals had already been scheduled for one of the first deployments in the Major League Baseball Advanced Media (MLBAM) plan to bring Wi-Fi to every team in the league, with actual installation taking place in midsummer.

“The idea was to have it up and running during our last three homestands, and use that as a test- bed for the 2015 season,” Himstedt said. Instead, the Royals found themselves with perhaps the ultimate test of any new network deployment, repeat sellout crowds for baseball’s ultimate bucket-list event. Even though it wasn’t expected, as Himstedt said, having to maintain a network because your team got all the way to Game 7 of the World Series “is a good problem to have.”

Wi-Fi antennas pointing down at Kauffman Stadium seating. Photo: MLB Photos

Wi-Fi antennas pointing down at Kauffman Stadium seating. Photo: MLB Photos

Worth the wait for MLBAM deployment

Editor’s note: This story is reprinted from our latest Stadium Tech Report, the BASEBALL (and Soccer!) ISSUE, which is available now for free download from our site. The report includes a focus on baseball and soccer stadium technology deployments, and team-by-team coverage of technology deployments for all 30 MLS teams — AND all 20 MLS teams. DOWNLOAD THE REPORT now and read for yourself!

While MLBAM’s decision to pay for a major part of the league-wide deployments no doubt sped up the Wi-Fi timetable for many participants, Himstedt said that the rollout plan (which began in earnest last year) actually delayed an original timetable to bring Wi-Fi to Kauffman.

According to Himstedt, the Royals had investigated putting Wi-Fi into the stadium before the 2012 season, when Kansas City hosted the All- Star Game. But MLBAM convinced the team to wait until its connectivity-everywhere plan became reality, in no small part due to the technical, political and most-expenses-paid attributes that became part of MLB’s Wi-Fi and DAS push.

“When we investigated it [Wi-Fi] for 2012, BAM was already talking about their plan, and we saw the comprehensiveness of what they were talking about,” Himstedt said. “In some ways it slowed us down, but when it happened, it happened right.”

Perhaps one of the biggest attributes of the MLB plan was the league’s ability to work in concert with all four of the major cellular carriers in the U.S., not just in herding the cats together so that DAS deployments would include all carriers, but in also getting the carriers to agree to foot a significant portion of the overall deployment costs.

Royals fans cheering on the blue team during the playoffs. Photo: Chris Vlesides/Kansas City Royals

Royals fans cheering on the blue team during the playoffs. Photo: Chris Vlesides/Kansas City Royals

“Dealing with the complexity of politics that exists [between] the carriers, we wouldn’t have had what the league was able to do,” Himstedt said. “Back in September of 2012, I felt disappointed that we missed an opportunity to have it [Wi-Fi] for the All-Star Game. But looking back, I see all the mistakes we could have made. I’d have to say it was worth the wait.”

Learning the curves

Opened in 1973, Kauffman Stadium has long been one of MLB’s more attractive parks, with its signature outfield fountains and its open, curved design. In 2009, the stadium underwent a $250 million renovation, which while it did not include wireless deployments it did help pave the way for Wi-Fi to come later, Himstedt said, with additions of more cable pathways and a “more robust” overall IT infrastructure.

Before the 2014 season started, Himstedt and the Kauffman Stadium IT team dug into the Wi-Fi design process, mapping out the resources and schedule for the in-season install that started in the summer.

“We knew it would take about 12 to 13 weeks [to install the network] after we said ‘go,’ “ Himstedt said. “When things began to flow we got a little but lucky with the weather and tried to plan [to do most of the work] around home stands. But we still did a lot of work on game days, right up until game time.”

Like in many other stadium retrofits, Himstedt said the biggest challenges for deploying Wi-Fi in Kauffman Stadium were “coverage and aesthetics.” Both came into play together due to the stadium’s circle-like design, which Himstedt noted means “there are no straight aisles” in the building, making it harder to deploy and tune antenna coverage.

While managing the gaps caused by the curved architecture was challenging, Himstedt said that new antenna technology from MLB supplier Cisco proved up to the task. “The [new] Cisco technology and its ability to shape signals definitely worked to our advantage, especially versus technology that was available 3 years ago,” Himstedt said.

More new Cisco technology that supports longer distances between an access point and a user also helped the Kauffman deployment, since the stadium has many long, open bowl areas with no close overhangs and no seating-section railings, two places that are popular in many other venues for Wi-Fi AP locations.

The classic curved lines of Kauffman. Photo: Chris Vlesides/Kansas City Royals

The classic curved lines of Kauffman. Photo: Chris Vlesides/Kansas City Royals

“We put antennas at the front of aisles, and in the back of the bowl, pointing down,” Himstedt said. The new antenna technology, he said, supported connectivity from 50 to 60 feet away, which he called a “huge win” for helping keep sight lines and aesthetic views uncluttered with antenna gear. When it was finished, the Wi-Fi deployment used 576 APs, Himstedt said.

The quickly discovered ‘secret’

When the Wi-Fi network finally went live for an Aug. 25 night game, Himstedt and the Royals used what we here at MSR like to call the “Fight Club” method of non-promotion: First rule of Wi-Fi, is don’t talk about the Wi-Fi.

“We were 100 percent quiet – we didn’t mention it to anybody publicly,” said Himstedt of the network availability. The theory was, by not telling anyone the IT team could test and tune a live network over a few home stands, with only about 1,000 media members and internal staff using the Wi-Fi.

But a couple hours after turning the network on, the IT staff saw 3,000 users on the network, meaning that at least 2,000 or more fans had found and connected to the unannounced Wi-Fi. While outsiders might not think Kansas City is a place where citizens are always looking for an SSID, Himstedt said the locals are “probably the most unexpectedly tech savvy” group around, perhaps thanks to the nearby location of Sprint’s corporate headquarters, as well as the fact that Google Fiber brought its first services to Kansas City, spurring some local startup activity.

Throughout the end of the regular season and through the Royals’ extended playoff run, Himstedt and the Kauffman staff kept publicly silent about the Wi-Fi (“it was completely word-of-mouth”), though Major League Baseball did make a national-press announcement and some highly sophisticated stadium technology media outlets (meaning us) did publish stories about the Wi-Fi network’s availability.

Old Glory on the field. Photo: Chris Vlesides/Kansas City Royals

Old Glory on the field. Photo: Chris Vlesides/Kansas City Royals

Himstedt, who had wanted Wi-Fi for the All-Star Game, finally got to provide wireless services to the 600+ national media members who became regular attendees at playoff games. And by the time Game 7 of the World Series rolled around – and ended heartbreakingly for Royals fans, with the potential tying run 90 feet from home plate – the Kauffman IT staff saw 16,000 users on the Wi-Fi network, with more than 2 terabytes of total traffic used during the last game of the baseball season.

“We enjoyed it [Wi-Fi] as being a pleasant surprise, an unexpected surprise for our fans,” Himstedt said.

Positioned for the future

For the 2015 season, the Kauffman Stadium IT crew is neither shy nor silent about its Wi-Fi network.

“This year we’re promoting it clear and direct, and we want fans to use it to its fullest extent,” said Himstedt. Along with promoting use of MLBAM’s signature Ballpark app for at-the-game needs, Himstedt said one of the team’s primary pushes is to encourage digital ticketing, a feature he said is already being used by all of the team’s primary season ticket holders.

Since the Kauffman Stadium complex also has all ticketed parking, those fees can also be paid via digital, a feature that went from hundreds of users to thousands this year, Himstedt said.

“The learning curve is fast – it’s pretty amazing how quickly fans adapt,” he said.

In the very near future, overall connectivity should improve by another factor as the stadium’s DAS upgrade is completed. Himstedt and his team are also just at the beginning phase of deploying and using beacons, the low-power sensing devices that can communicate with devices in close vicinity. While beacons are currently only being used for social media “check-in” purposes, Himstedt can see a future where the technology might be used for things like concession promotions, or to provide directions to areas like the venue’s Hall of Fame exhibits.

Himstedt is also interested in using the technology to take “check-ins” even further, with the network being able to automatically check a device for ticket purchases as the fan walks in the gates.

It’d be cool for the network to take the tickets out of my pocket for me,” Himstedt said. “The app is the magic. You just have to enable it.”

Filed Under: 4G LTE, Apps, AT&T, Baseball, Cisco, DAS, Major League Baseball, MSR Guides, Sprint, Verizon Wireless, Wi-Fi Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

HP buys Wi-Fi gear maker Aruba Networks for $3 billion

March 2, 2015 by Leave a Comment

An Aruba AP inside the Moda Center

An Aruba AP inside the Moda Center

The rumors from last week were confirmed Monday, as computing giant Hewlett-Packard (aka “HP”) announced it was acquiring Wi-Fi gear vendor Aruba Networks for $3 billion. After cash and debt are accounted for, the actual value of the transaction is $2.7 billion, but what’s $300 million between friends?

Though the headline of the HP release pegs the reason behind the deal as the desire to “create an industry leader in enterprise mobility,” the acquisition will likely cause a lot of business activity in our corner of the world, namely wireless network deployments for large public venues, like stadiums. Over the past year, Aruba has been making a name for itself with high-profile Wi-Fi deployments in venues like the San Francisco 49ers’ new Levi’s Stadium, Texas A&M University’s Kyle Field, and the Dallas Mavericks’ American Airlines Center, among others. Perhaps the most interesting question from a business perspective is whether being part of HP will help or hurt Aruba when it comes to making stadium deals, and whether or not using HP core networking gear will become a required (or preferred) part of prospective stadium Wi-Fi deals.

On a business-wide view, the second $3 billion acquisition this year in the DAS/Wi-Fi space (following CommScope’s $3 billion purchase of DAS and networking supplier TE Connectivity) is perhaps a signal that consolidation is upon us in the greater Wi-Fi and local networking marketplace. Though we didn’t know exactly how and when such deals would shake out, on one hand it’s not that much of a surprise to us since we have always believed that the stadium networking market is really just a precursor to what will eventually happen in other large public venues as well as in large public places like cities and towns: Wi-Fi, which already carries more wireless data than cellular, will continue to expand and appear in more places, generating new business ideas like Wi-Fi phones and Wi-Fi first wireless plans.

The appearance of IBM as a strong entrant in the stadium wireless space can also be looked at as another signal that bigger players are entering the market, which usually means that smaller players — like the Arubas of the world — get snapped up, like a star player being traded mid-year to a team seeking a championship. Cisco, which is no stranger to acquisitions, has been quiet of late, and we are noticing that telecom gear giant Ericsson is making more moves toward Wi-Fi, especially in the arena of small cells and the idea of bringing LTE to Wi-Fi frequencies. Sounds like the Wi-Fi market is moving up from the $10 tables into the green- and black-chip territory.

Who’s next in the Wi-Fi world as an acquisition target? The easy picks are players like Ruckus Wireless and Aerohive Networks, given their ability to conduct their own IPOs. But we’re also guessing there may be some digesting of other smaller concerns in the Wi-Fi DAS food chain as the bigger players seek to add skills, customers and technology via purchases. Stay tuned for what should be an exciting year in the enterprise and stadium Wi-Fi business arena.

Filed Under: Cisco, DAS, Ericsson, Extreme Networks, Hewlett-Packard, Levi's Stadium, MSR Guides, Wi-Fi Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Washington dropping Huawei for Cisco/Verizon Wi-Fi at FedEx Field, report says

December 17, 2014 by Leave a Comment

Ming He, Country General Manager for Huawei in the U.S. (left), and Rod Nenner, Vice President of the Washington Redskins (right), pictured together when Huawei announced the team sponsorship and partnership.

Ming He, Country General Manager for Huawei in the U.S. (left), and Rod Nenner, Vice President of the Washington Redskins (right), pictured together when Huawei announced the team sponsorship and partnership.

According to a report from Bill Gertz at the Washington Times, the Washington, D.C. NFL franchise is apparently scrapping a recent deal with Chinese networking gear supplier Huawei to put fan-facing Wi-Fi into FedEx Field, turning instead to U.S. companies Cisco and Verizon.

Gertz, in the “Inside the Ring” column at the Times, said the Washington team’s senior vice president Tony Wyllie said in an email that “We [Washington] are in the process of deploying a stadium-wide Wi-Fi network working with Verizon and Cisco.” Gertz said the team did not elaborate on why the recent deal with Huawei was apparently scrapped before it got started.

Huawei, which claims to have installed Wi-Fi networks in many stadiums worldwide, had not had any large-scale installations at major U.S. venues before announcing the FedEx Field deal. 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.

Under the announced terms of the deal, Huawei was supposed to install Wi-Fi in suite areas this December; a company spokesman said that while there was no official deal announced, Huawei was also supposed to follow that install up with a full-stadium deployment before the 2015 season started. In the initial announcement, the team announced Huawei Enterprise USA as a multi-year team sponsor and “Official Technology Partner.”

We have got calls and emails in to all the interested parties, and will update this story as we hear more.

Filed Under: Cisco, NFL, Verizon Wireless, Wi-Fi Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,
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