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Mobilitie brings interim Wi-Fi to L.A. Coliseum

October 13, 2017 by Leave a Comment

The Los Angeles Coliseum is home to the NFL’s Rams and the University of Southern California. Credit all photos: Terry Sweeney, MSR (click on any photo for a larger image)

Previously reliant solely on DAS coverage, the Los Angeles Coliseum added Wi-Fi coverage last November in the student section – about 7,500 seats on the bowl’s east side – thanks to a donation of equipment and labor by Mobilitie.

The wireless services provider is also in the process of adding Wi-Fi to two sets of club suites — behind the southern end-zone and on the deck of the Coliseum’s iconic peristyle. These are used by fans of the Los Angeles Rams, the recently relocated NFL franchise playing its second season in the City of Angels. The Rams’ new $2.6 billion stadium is under construction in nearby Inglewood, projected to be done in 2019 and ready for the 2020 NFL season.

In addition to the Rams, the Coliseum is also home field for the University of Southern California’s football team. It’s also slated to be the stadium for the 2028 Summer Olympics, playing host to the world’s athletes for an unprecedented third time.

More renovations coming soon

Editor’s note: This profile is an excerpt from our latest STADIUM TECH REPORT, our Fall 2017 issue that has in-depth profiles of network deployments at Notre Dame Stadium, Colorado State’s new stadium, and the Atlanta Falcons’ new Mercedes-Benz Stadium. DOWNLOAD YOUR FREE COPY of the report today!

Mobilitie’s generosity notwithstanding, all the fan-facing Wi-Fi at the Coliseum is temporary, according to Derek Thatcher, an IT manager for USC, which manages the Coliseum on behalf of the County of Los Angeles. Demolition at the stadium will get underway in January 2018; while much of the bowl’s structure will remain, permanent club suites will be added as will new seating and new aisles with handrails. That will translate to a reduction in bowl capacity from 94,000 to 77,500, according to USC.

Close-up of the under-seat Wi-Fi APs

The $270 million refresh was already underway before LA’s eleventh-hour entry in the Olympics sweepstakes, activated after Boston voted down a bid. The U.S. Olympic Committee has earmarked $175 million for other upgrades at the Coliseum for the quadrennial gathering of the world’s athletes – and broadcasters.

A surprise part of LA’s Olympic bid was a proposal for simultaneous opening ceremonies at two venues, Thatcher explained. Under the USOC’s plan, the visual and logistical extravaganza could be split between the Coliseum and the gleaming new NFL stadium that the Rams will share with the Los Angeles Chargers (formerly of San Diego). Though the Games are more than 10 years away, it’s unclear how the use of two venues would work logistically. But the potential wow factor of such a spectacle is undeniable.

In the meantime, Thatcher, many of his USC counterparts and busloads of subcontractors will have their hands full once the current NFL season ends early next year. Fan-facing Wi-Fi is part of the plan for the Coliseum refresh; no word on which vendors are in the running or when the university will award the Wi-Fi contract.

Another look at the under-seat AP deployment

Gaining insight for the future

The USC Trojan faithful and Rams fans at the Coliseum had been reliant on DAS from AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon Wireless. But Wi-Fi coverage is envisioned from the gates to the concourses and bowl. The Coliseum Wi-Fi will not extend to adjacent parking lots, which are owned by the State of California, not USC, Thatcher added.

And though the equipment and service contract hasn’t been awarded yet, Mobilitie made a smart move with the interim gear it donated – Wi-Fi access points all made by Aruba (now owned by HP Enterprise), the same Wi-Fi gear in use across the rest of USC’s campus. The donated network also gives Mobilitie insight to usage patterns, user habits and engineering challenges that are unique to the venue.

The Coliseum’s renovation is projected to be done by August 2019, though the facility will be useable for home games played by both USC and the Rams in the interim, according to Thatcher.

In the meantime, 166 Aruba APs will power fan-facing Wi-Fi at the Coliseum. Mobilitie installed under-seat APs; rather than drill new conduits or use saw-cuts through stadium concrete, the service provider used low-profile rubber matting to conceal the wiring. Many of the APs are also installed on angled concrete, which helps preserve storage space beneath the seats, a plus for fans and their sacks and packs.

Filed Under: 4G LTE, Aruba, AT&T, DAS, NCAA Football, NFL, T-Mobile, Verizon Wireless, Wi-Fi Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

AT&T Stadium, Kyle Field lead in AT&T DAS football traffic

October 10, 2017 by Leave a Comment

Full house at Kyle Field. Credit: Paul Kapustka, MSR

Two of the biggest stadiums in Texas, the Dallas Cowboys’ AT&T Stadium and Kyle Field at Texas A&M, have seen the most AT&T cellular traffic on those stadiums’ distributed antenna system (DAS) networks so far this football season, according to AT&T.

According to statistics provided by AT&T, the Cowboys’ home stadium has seen 4.82 terabytes of data for games through Oct. 5, leading all pro stadiums where AT&T has DAS installations. On the college side, Kyle Field has seen a total of 5.80 TB through Oct. 5, tops for university venues. These statistics are only for AT&T customers, and only on in-stadium networks; the numbers do not include macro traffic seen outside stadiums, according to AT&T.

All the college game stats include three home games at each venue; on the pro side, Dallas, Houston and the 49ers stats are from just two home games; Denver and Green Bay stats are from three home games.

Rounding out the top five in the pro stadium list are: NRG Stadium, Houston, 3.89 TB; Lambeau Field, Green Bay, 3.0 TB; Sports Authority Field at Mile High, Denver, 2.92 TB; Levi’s Stadium, Santa Clara, Calif., 2.91 TB.

On the college side, the rest of the top five after Texas A&M are: Tiger Stadium, Baton Rouge, La., 5.55 TB; Memorial Stadium, Clemson, S.C., 4.63 TB; Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, 4.27 TB; Bryant-Denny Stadium, Tuscaloosa, Ala., 4.25 TB.

Filed Under: 4G LTE, AT&T Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Iowa’s Kinnick Stadium gets new DAS for 2017

October 5, 2017 by Leave a Comment

DAS antennas seen on flagpoles at Iowa’s Kinnick Stadium. Credit: Gary Turner / CWS (click on any photo for a larger image)

Fans at the University of Iowa’s Kinnick Stadium should finally have cellular connectivity this season, thanks to a new neutral-host DAS installed by Connectivity Wireless Solutions over the past offseason.

Though we don’t have any stats or speed test reports yet, Connectivity Wireless said the DAS was scheduled to begin operation at the start of the season, with fine-tuning taking place during the first few home games. Verizon Wireless and U.S. Cellular were active on the DAS at the start, according to Connectivity Wireless, with AT&T in testing at the season’s start.

Steven Morris, director of engineering for Connectivity Wireless, said the new DAS is using Corning One gear at the core, and has a mainly fiber infrastructure with coax used only in the “final 30 to 40 feet” for connection to edge gear and antennas. Connectivity Wireless also installed a new DAS at the school’s basketball stadium, Carver-Hawkeye Arena, which should also be ready for the upcoming season. According to news reports, the DAS contract for Kinnick is $6 million, while the cost for the network at Carver-Hawkeye is $3 million.

The DAS for the 70,000-seat historic Kinnick Stadium, Morris said, has 13 sectors, and according to news reports, uses approximately 200 antennas. Like many older open-bowl stadiums, deployment at Kinnick was a challenge simply due to its design as well as to the fact the building has historical aesthetic elements, making antenna placement a job with multiple approvals necessary.

Overhead view of the bowl shape of Kinnick Stadium. Credit: University of Iowa

Overcoming aesthetic and design challenges

“There was no real place for antennas,” said Morris, who said Connectivity Wireless found a way to bring coverage to the main bowl seating partially through a strategy of replacing existing flagpoles mounted around the stadium’s edges with new custom-designed poles that had conduit and antenna mounts built in.

“It was a big challenge for us, with lots of approvals to go through,” said Morris. Connectivity Wireless also had to trench fiber from the stadium to the campus’ network head-end, which is located in one of the school’s hospitals about a mile away from Kinnick. All this work needed to be done in the spring and summer, Morris said, since you can’t dig underground in Iowa where winter weather can regularly produce sub-zero temperatures.

With plenty of fiber capacity now in place, Morris said Kinnick Stadium could also eventually install a Wi-Fi network, though it would most likely mean some kind of under-seat AP deployment with its associated coring costs. However, there still may be some legal entanglements regarding any future network deployments, as Iowa is still involved in a lawsuit with American Tower, which it had originally contracted with to build the Kinnick DAS. That 2013 deal, however, was terminated by the university in 2015, and the matter is still being adjucated under a lawsuit filed by American Tower. American Tower would not comment on the status of the lawsuit.

More flagpole-mounted DAS at Kinnick Stadium; Credit both photos: Gary Turner / CWS

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

New Colorado State stadium has winning Wi-Fi network

October 3, 2017 by Leave a Comment

Colorado State University has a new on-campus football stadium. Credit all photos: Paul Kapustka, MSR (click on any photo for a larger image)

Even though it’s not completely finished, the Wi-Fi network at Colorado State University’s new football stadium has already shown strong signs of promise, signaling a future with great connectivity for Rams fans at their new on-campus venue.

Being built by integrator 5 Bars, the network is in its final phases of completion, with enough of it turned on to get some positive results in the first two home games for Colorado State this season.

On Aug. 26, during Colorado State’s 58-27 win over visiting Oregon State, a sellout crowd of 37,583 crammed into the new on-campus venue for the Fort Collins, Colo., school. During the inaugural event, the not-yet-finished Wi-Fi network nevertheless saw 5,891 unique connections during the day with a peak concurrent number of 3,680 users at 3 p.m. local time, according to 5 Bars. Even with most of the under-seat Wi-Fi connections not yet online (5 Bars said the network was about at 35 percent capacity), the network still saw 2.7 terabytes of data used, an average of 458 MB per connected user.

Some under-seat Wi-Fi APs needed conduit cored through the concrete steps

A couple weeks later, Mobile Sports Report was in the house for CSU’s second home game, a 38-10 victory over Abilene Christian. With 27,038 fans in attendance, many wearing bright orange to celebrate CSU’s “Ag Day” heritage (the official school colors are green and gold), the network saw 4,548 unique users and 1.8 TB of traffic, according to 5 Bars.

Under-seat coverage impressive

Editor’s note: This profile is an excerpt from our latest STADIUM TECH REPORT, our Fall 2017 issue that has in-depth profiles of network deployments at Notre Dame Stadium, Mercedes-Benz Stadium, and the Los Angeles Coliseum. DOWNLOAD YOUR FREE COPY of the report today!

If there is a design tactic that seems to have paid off, it’s 5 Bars decision to go under-seat with Wi-Fi APs in most of the lower seating bowl. With 250 in-bowl APs out of the estimated 419 total APs used in the venue, many are in under-seat enclosures, both in premium areas with seats with backs, as well as in seating areas with metal benches.

And while building a stadium from scratch with Wi-Fi in mind usually means under-seat deployment can be easier, 5 Bars found that in the end it needed to place some APs in different spots, leading to some on-site construction that included coring holes in concrete steps to thread conduit across some aisles. The end result, however, is impressive, with MSR speed tests hitting the mid-50 Mbps and into the 60-Mbps marks for both download and upload speeds in most of the lower bowl seating, with tests taken before the game in an empty stadium.

The on-campus proximity of the new stadium is a welcome change for CSU fans

But even later, with orange-clad CSU fans filling the seats, the working Wi-Fi network still performed admirably, with a 63.58 down and 48.35 up reading in the middle of the student section on the stadium’s east side during the first quarter. Closer to the end of the first quarter, we got a 24.33 / 9.96 reading in the lower section of the west side, the most tightly packed area in the stadium that day.

Light standards and beer gardens

While under-seat placements may be the workhorses at CSU’s new stadium, there are also plenty of overhead APs to fill in the gaps, such as at the top of the lower-bowl sections, mounted underneath the overhang. There are also Wi-Fi APs as well as DAS antennas on the large light standards that top the east stands. Though we didn’t test the DAS network, 5 Bars has a neutral host deployment that currently has Verizon Wireless online, with AT&T and T-Mobile to follow soon. Sprint is scheduled to be added next year, with support for Sprint’s 2.5 GHz spectrum, 5 Bars said.

One thing that makes the new CSU stadium unique is the New Belgium Brewing beer garden that fills the north end zone of the stadium. With several rows of long, stand-up tabletops where fans can sip a beer while watching the game, as well as a bar area behind, the beer garden was already a popular place to hang out, as evidenced by the big line that formed shortly after the stadium opened.

And thanks to the structures over the bar area, the beer garden was well covered by Wi-Fi APs mounted above the taps. Even down in one of the stand-up rows close to the field we were still able to get a Wi-Fi reading of 55.69 down and 24.11 up. We also taste-tested New Belgium’s “Old Aggie Lager,” a brew made specifically by the local company for CSU. It’s crisp and refreshing, especially on a sunny Saturday afternoon. And it goes perfectly with good Wi-Fi.

Fans are able to share social media posts via the new big screen video board

A look at the west stands from the back of the student section

An overhead look at the north end zone beer garden, with a view to the mountains just west of the venue

The beer garden standing area provides an up-close look at the action

As always, Mobile Sports Report tests, tests and tests again

Filed Under: 4G LTE, Cisco, DAS, NCAA Football, Wi-Fi Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Notre Dame’s new Wi-Fi, Mercedes-Benz Stadium first look — all in our new Stadium Tech Report!

September 25, 2017 by Leave a Comment

We always get excited here at Mobile Sports Report when we have a new quarterly report out, but the stories, profiles and analysis in our Fall 2017 issue just may be our best-ever effort. With a detailed look at the new Wi-Fi network at Notre Dame Stadium, and a first look at the Atlanta Falcons’ new Mercedes-Benz Stadium, our Fall 2017 issue starts off with a doubleheader of deep information profiles and it doesn’t stop there!

In addition to Notre Dame and Mercedes-Benz Stadium, this issue also has a detailed look at the new football stadium at Colorado State University, which also has high-performing Wi-Fi and a neutral-host DAS deployment. We also take a look at the Wi-Fi renovation taking place at the Denver Broncos’ Sports Authority Field at Mile High, a network upgrade that should lift the Broncos’ home to the top of the list of NFL stadium networks. And we’re still not done!

Also in this issue is a well timed, deeply informed essay from Chuck Lukaszewski about unlicensed LTE and what it means to venues. Chuck, the top wireless guru at Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company, digs into this developing cellular/Wi-Fi issue and delivers some heads-up knowledge that all venue tech professionals should absorb. We also have one more profle in the issue, a look at a temporary Wi-Fi network being installed at the Los Angeles Coliseum. That’s a lot of reading, so get started by downloading your free copy today!

Part of the reason we’re able to bring you so much good content is the support we get from our industry sponsors. In this issue we also have a record number of sponsors, including Mobilitie, Crown Castle, CommScope, JMA Wireless, Corning, Huber+Suhner, American Tower, Extreme Networks, Oberon, Cox Business, 5 Bars, Boingo Wireless and Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company. The support of our sponsors allows Mobile Sports Report to not only do all the work necessary to bring you these great stories, but it also allows us to offer our reports to readers free of charge! We’d also like to welcome new readers from the Inside Towers community, who may have found their way here via our new partnership with the excellent publication Inside Towers.

Download the Fall 2017 Stadium Tech Report today!

Filed Under: 4G LTE, AmpThink, Aruba, AT&T, Cisco, DAS, Denver Broncos, Denver Broncos, Hewlett-Packard, MSR Guides, NCAA Football, NFL, Super Bowl, Verizon Wireless, Wi-Fi Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Notre Dame sees 6.2 TB of Wi-Fi traffic for Georgia game

September 13, 2017 by 2 Comments

Notre Dame logo on Wi-Fi railing enclosure at Notre Dame Stadium. Credit: Paul Kapustka, MSR

The final score on the football field may not have made Fighting Irish fans happy, but on the connectivity side of things the new Wi-Fi network at Notre Dame Stadium scored a big win with 6.2 terabytes of traffic used during Notre Dame’s Sept. 9 home game against Georgia.

Deployed by AmpThink, the new Wi-Fi network is part of a $400 stadium renovation called Campus Crossroads that debuted in time for this year’s college football season. Mobile Sports Report got a look at the new stadium renovations, which include new premium seating areas and a large video board, during an August football scrimmage event that was open to fans.

On Sept. 3, the Irish formally opened the stadium with a home game against Temple, which Notre Dame won 49-16. According to Notre Dame, the new Wi-Fi network saw 4.8 TB of traffic for the season opener, with 21,395 unique client connections and a peak concurrent connection number of 15,800. For the Sept. 9 game against Georgia, a prime-time night game that saw the Irish just fall on the short end of a 20-19 score, the network saw 6.2 TB of traffic, with 25,856 uniques and 19,475 peak concurrent connections.

By our unofficial records, the 6.2 TB mark is the highest Wi-Fi traffic number recorded for a single-day college event. The previous high mark was a 5.7 TB total reported by Texas A&M for a 2015 season game against Alabama. (Any other big marks out there that we don’t know about, please let us know!)

Total attendance for both Notre Dame games this season was 77,622, which sounds like the new sellout capacity for the stadium, a number not previously reported since the renovation. Notre Dame can probably expect another big network experience on Oct. 21, when the Irish host Pac-12 rival USC.

Filed Under: AmpThink, Cisco, NCAA Football, Wi-Fi Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,
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