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Wi-Fi Whispers: Where’s Brocade in Niners’ New Stadium Plans? Plus More NFL Wi-Fi with Cisco in Atlanta, Verizon in Detroit

March 27, 2013 by

There was one thing missing from the great Ars Technica blowout on the proposed Wi-Fi network at the new stadium being built for the San Francisco 49ers: Any mention of networking partner Brocade, which made a big deal about how it was going to help the Niners with a state-of-the-art stadium network.

In a Twitter exchange with the story’s author, Jon Brodkin, he said that the Niners’ networking crew asserted that they hadn’t yet picked a vendor for the access points the network will use. That opinion was not taken well by the folks at Brocade, who have not commented publicly but are most likely having some interesting discussions with their new partner the 49ers.

What it may boil down to is the fact that the Niners’ networking crew is waiting for the next generation of Wi-Fi hardware to come out — most likely built around the new 802.11ac protocol — and since the network isn’t scheduled to go live for another year, it’s probable that they are not yet at final hardware decisions. Though no monetary details of the Brocade agreement were ever revealed, it was supposed to encompass not just building of the stadium network but name-sponsoring an attached meeting room area that Brocade (whose headquarters are close to the stadium site) would be able to use during non-football times.

Then there is the big question about whether or not networking giant Cisco, which also has headquarters within walking distance of the Niners’ stadium, will be involved in any way at all. Cisco, the current big player in the stadium-network space, might be tapped for digital signage or video, but it’s hard to imagine both Cisco and Brocade being “partners.” We are guessing this story is far from over…

Cisco Network in Georgia Dome Profiled

MSR would like to give a shout out to Steve Zurier, who penned this excellent breakdown of the new Cisco Wi-Fi network in the Georgia Dome. Steve, who at one point held down bass guitar duties on our old industry band Kludge, spells out how stadiums are the ultimate BYOD operation. I bet there will be plenty of Cisco employees on hand to “make sure the network keeps working” during the upcoming men’s Final Four.

Verizon makes Lions Wi-Fi Official

We’ve noted here before how Verizon Wireless doesn’t like to call attention to its stadium network deals — probably because it doesn’t want every team clamoring for the same investment — but it is nice to see Big Red come out publicly and talk about the Wi-Fi network it put into Ford Field in Detroit.

What I think is kind of bogus is the fact that the network is available only to Verizon customers; I hope the tradeoff of having a network that only keeps a third of your customers happy is worth it for the Lions, but to me it sounds like a poor decision. Check out the quote from Mark Emerick, Verizon’s director of network operations, about what fans can do if they’ve shelled out thousands for season tickets but have a phone from another provider:

“As fans are frustrated with other carriers they may look to their neighbors next to them and decide to switch.”

Or, they could decide to not come to the games.

Filed Under: Cisco, NFL, Verizon Wireless Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Wednesday Wi-Fi Whispers: Brocade and the Niners, Part 2

October 24, 2012 by

Just a quick promised expansion of last week’s top story, the official signing of Brocade as the provider for the upcoming network in the new San Francsico 49ers stadium. Dave Stevens, Brocade CTO, told us that the deal between the networking gear provider and the team had been brewing for several years, while Brocade was building its new headquarters near the team’s Santa Clara training and business facility.

“Brocade’s campus buildings were all about being green, with photovoltaic power and LEED certification,” said Stevens, noting that some similar design guidelines (solar, sustainable) are being used in the Niners’ new stadium. “I think there was some commonality between them and us with vision.”

In terms of whether or not Brocade has the experience to build a stadium-ready infrastructure, Stevens said the company has already installed a couple stadium networks, but hasn’t publicized them. He also noted that Brocade typically sells to customers like large national telecom carriers and other big mission-critical enterprise businesses. “We grew up on that, so we’re confident with that [high pressure] environment,” Stevens said. In terms of stadium networks, he added, “we’re familiar with what has to be done.”

For the new Niners stadium, Stevens acknowledged that its location in the middle of Silicon Valley raises the bar for expectations about network performance. “It’s a much higher bar than for any other venue,” he agreed. “It’s the middle of Silicon Valley. But we should be able to put an infrastructure in place with enough capacity to drive whatever apps people can dream up.”

Right now Stevens said Brocade is guessing that a lot of the Wi-Fi gear will incorporate the new 802.11ac standard, which holds the promise of much greater throughput and much better antenna performance. But he also knows that in the ensuing two years before the stadium is scheduled to open, advances in mobile devices will probably continue to push the envelope for mobile data networks.

“There’s just an unprecedented amount of I/O capacity that’s now being carried around in people’s pockets,” Stevens said. “If you’re a tech guy it’s scary. But we are looking to deliver an unprecedented [wireless] experience, and make sure it’s ready by day one.”

Filed Under: 4G LTE, NFL, Wi-Fi Tagged With: , , , ,

Wednesday Wi-Fi Whispers: Brocade, Niners Make it Official

October 17, 2012 by

After hinting about a relationship earlier this year, the San Francisco 49ers and networking vendor Brocade made it official Tuesday, announcing Brocade as the “exclusive and official network solutions partner of the San Francisco 49ers.” Though no details on the exact buildout are yet available, Brocade Chief Technical Officer Dave Stevens told MSR in a phone interview Tuesday that Brocade will be responsible for the “entire wired and wireless network infrastructure” for the new Niners stadium currently being built in Santa Clara.

We’ll break out more details from our interview with Stevens next week but the bottom line is, he says Brocade knows that this stadium will have to live up to a higher standard because of its location smack dab in the middle of Silicon Valley. That means the Niners and Brocade will aim for building the best Wi-Fi and cellular fan network that can be built, as well as a wireless network to run other stadium apps like signage, ticketing, security and more.

“The Niners and Brocade are looking for an unprecedented network experience,” Stevens said. What that will be is a bit of a moving target, since the stadium won’t be ready for a couple years at the earliest. While technology changes and improvements will affect deployments some, Stevens said you can probably count on Wi-Fi equipment that embraces the nascent 802.11ac standard, which supports much higher data rates than current Wi-Fi gear. As we said, more from our interview next week.

If there’s a loser right now in the game it’s Cisco, which like Brocade has its headquarters in the same San Jose/Santa Clara neighborhood as the stadium. (Cisco’s HQ is literally just down the street.) With a business unit dedicated to building out stadium networks, Cisco might have been seen as a lock for the bid and even earlier this month had hinted rather strongly that they wouldn’t be shut out of the Niners’ new stadium, which has a long list of corporate sponsors on its roster, like SAP, whose name is on the practice center. Maybe there will be some room for Cisco on the digital signage part of the buildout? Cisco reps contacted Tuesday had the “no comment” light on, but from the looks of it this Brocade deal doesn’t seem to leave much room for any Cisco gear. But it ain’t over until the access points get connected, or something like that.

Ericsson Intros Stadium-Specific Wi-Fi Gear

Telecom supplier Ericsson Tuesday announced a set of stadium-specific Wi-Fi gear, the first new products coming out of the company’s acquisition of Wi-Fi specialist BelAir Networks earlier this year. According to the press release, Ericsson now has a Wi-Fi access point and a Wi-Fi controller designed specifically for stadium use. Since Ericsson sells mainly to big telecom companies like Verizon and AT&T, look for this year to be used side by side with small-cell cellular technology as the big carriers continue their quest to make fans’ phones work in stadiums worldwide.

(hat tip to Phil Harvey at Light Reading for alerting us to the news release. Phil and his crew cover Ericsson… a lot.)

AT&T Adds 4G LTE DAS to… Some Stadium in Foxboro

From the “we can’t tell you but you can figure it out file” comes a press release from AT&T today telling us of the company’s newest DAS upgrade, a 4G LTE implementation that will make fans’ cell phones work better in… a football stadium in Foxboro, Mass. Yep, because of stadium naming rights AT&T apparently can’t use the name of the place but… we are under no such restrictions. So unless there is a spaceship stadium that landed during the night we are guessing that New England Patriots fans will find their AT&T iPhones connecting a bit better now.

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

Wednesday Wi-Fi Whispers: DAS, but no Wi-Fi, for Niners at Candlestick

August 22, 2012 by

There’s already buzz building in Silicon Valley for the new Niners stadium being constructed in Santa Clara, as the team is already out front saying the facility will be an example of how to do stadium technology right.

Unfortunately for Niners fans, the next two home seasons will still be played in San Francisco’s Candlestick Park, which has historically been one of the worst places to try to get a cellular signal. Though a new Distributed Antenna System (DAS) deployment should help matters some this season, there is no stadium-wide Wi-Fi in the cards, a bit of a bummer since the team’s new game-day app features lots of video — which you need Wi-Fi to watch.

With an edict from the commish Roger Goodell to put Wi-Fi into every stadium, teams across the league are moving quickly to figure out how to get that done (see the second part of this post about Carolina’s new spiffy network). Caught in the middle of this deployment strategy is Candlestick, which has to be one of the worst geographic locations for wireless traffic. Not only is the stadium hidden by a small hill directly to the west (which can block signals from nearby cell towers), it is surrounded on its three other sides by the San Francisco Bay — in case you weren’t aware, wide open spaces of water also play havoc with wireless signals, and you don’t see too many antenna towers floating around.

The historically terrible cellular situation at Candlestick was brought even more to light by last year’s “blackout” game, a Monday night tilt against the Steelers that saw the stadium lose power not once but twice. Though we didn’t hear any reports of fan panic (no shaking) we did hear from a lot of folks about how nobody knew what was going on because nobody could get a cell signal to check Twitter.

To help alleivate the problem the Niners and the top three wireless carriers — Verizon Wireless, AT&T Mobility and Sprint Nextel — collaborated on the installment of a DAS system at Candlestick, essentially a bunch of small cellular antennas mounted inside the stadium to make it easier for fans to connect. Apparently there is also a day-of-game Wi-Fi network in service at Niners games, though we haven’t been able to find any press material telling us where the service can be accessed. While we wait for the Niners’ reps to get back to us we will take a wild guess and post that it is a parking-lot or concession-area only network, and not something you can use at your seat.

So, Niners fans — even though there is a spiffy new game-day app, you probably aren’t going to get much use out of the video component at Candlestick. And since it doesn’t make sense to drop a few million bucks on a Wi-Fi network that will only be used less than a couple dozen times before the team moves south, unless the Niners can figure out how to bring in a portable Wi-Fi network the Candlestick fans are probably stuck with the DAS deployment as their best connection. Though DAS deployments are better than nothing, they simply don’t have the bandwidth that a robust Wi-Fi network can bring to the table.

Carolina Gets Stadium-Wide Wi-Fi, Courtesy of AT&T

In stark contrast to the situation at Candlestick is the news from the Carolina Panthers, who will have a powerful new Wi-Fi network at Bank of America stadium in Charlotte this year, courtesy of Ma Bell.

You can read the press release and from it what jumps out at us is the 460 Wi-Fi access points, a huge number that should keep everyone there connected. According to the release the Wi-Fi access is free and easy for AT&T customers, with users of other carrier systems having to connect via a “simple login.” Anyone out there in Panther land sample the new network yet? If so give us some SpeedTest results in the comments.

NFL’s Mobile Device Stadium Strategy Slowly Coming into View

There is no official announcement we have seen but if you peruse any NFL team web page you will see a bunch of little widgets popping up saying things like “Watch 49ers games online” with a link to the new preseason and rewind tablet apps that Greg Quick wrote about last week. There are also several teams, like the Niners, who apparently have some kind of GameDay Live-branded app — if this reminds you at all of MLB.com and its AtBat app strategy, it’s not a coincidence. You don’t need a press release to see what is happening, albeit a bit slowly — the NFL, like baseball, is moving to a single app for live mobile-device action, and it will cost you a bunch of extra dollars to watch it.

I think the fly in the ointment right now is the NFL’s current exclusive deal with Verizon for the NFL Mobile app, but I think that contract is up soon and I would be surprised if the NFL renews it. More likely we will see an MLB.com strategy emerge, where you purchase mobile-device access on a monthly or season-long basis. For the current year the NFL will take baby steps as it tries to help teams get networks put into stadiums. But I bet by next year there is a cohesive digital device content strategy that will cost fans a few more bucks. Might be worth it though, to get other games and RedZone while you are tailgating or waiting through halftime.

Filed Under: 4G LTE, Apps, AT&T, DAS, iPad, iPhone, Live sports via mobile, Live Sports Video Consumption, Major League Baseball, NFL, NFL Mobile, Sprint, Verizon Wireless, Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi Video Streaming Tagged With: , , , , , , ,
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