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BYU scores with new Wi-Fi, app for LaVell Edwards Stadium

December 12, 2018 by Leave a Comment

BYU’s LaVell Edwards Stadium. Credit all photos: photo@byu.edu (click on any picture for a larger image)

At Brigham Young University, the wait for Wi-Fi was worth it.

After a selection and deployment process that took almost three years, the first full season of Wi-Fi at BYU’s LaVell Edwards Stadium was a roaring success, with high fan adoption rates and a couple 6-plus terabyte single-game data totals seen during the 2018 football season. Using 1,241 APs from gear supplier Extreme Networks, the Wi-Fi deployment also saw high usage of the new game-day app, built for BYU by local software supplier Pesci Sports.

Duff Tittle, associate athletic director for communications at Brigham Young University, said the school spent nearly 2 1/2 years “studying the concept” of bringing Wi-Fi to the 63,470-seat stadium in Provo, Utah. After looking at “five different options,” BYU chose to go with Extreme, based mainly on Extreme’s long track record of football stadium deployments.

“We visited their stadiums, and also liked what they offered for analytics,” said Tittle of Extreme. “They had what we were looking for.”

According to Tittle, the deployment was actually mostly finished in 2017, allowing the school to do a test run at the last game of that season. Heading into 2018, Tittle said the school was “really excited” to see what its new network could do — and the fans went even beyond those expectations.

Opener a big success

For BYU’s Sept. 8 home opener against California, Tittle said the Wi-Fi network saw 27,563 unique connections out of 52,602 in attendance — a 52 percent take rate. BYU’s new network also saw a peak of 26,797 concurrent connections (midway through the fourth quarter) en route to a first-day data total of 6.23 TB. The network also saw a peak bandwidth rate of 4.55 Gbps, according to statistics provided by the school.

Sideline AP deployment

“It blew us away, the number of connections [at the Cal game],” Tittle said. “It exceeded what we thought we’d get, right out of the gate.”

With almost no overhangs in the stadium — there is only one sideline structure for media and suites — BYU and Extreme went with mostly under-seat AP deployments, Tittle said, with approximately 1,000 of the 1,241 APs located inside the seating bowl. Extreme has used under-seat deployments in many of its NFL stadium networks, including at Super Bowl LI in Houston.

Another success story was the new BYU app, which Tittle said had been in development for almost as long as the Wi-Fi plan. While many stadium and team apps struggle for traction, the BYU app saw good usage right out of the gate, finishing just behind the ESPN app for total number of users (2,306 for the BYU app vs. 2,470 for ESPN) during the same Cal game. The BYU app just barely trailed Instagram (2,327) in number of users seen that day, and outpaced SnapChat (1,603) and Twitter (1,580), according to statistics provided by Tittle. The app also supports instant replay video, as well as a service that lets fans order food to be picked up at a couple express-pickup windows.

What also might have helped fuel app adoption is the presence of a “social media” ribbon board along the top of one side of the stadium, where fan messages get seen in wide-screen glory. Tittle said the tech-savvy locals in the Provo area (which has long been the home to many technology companies, including LAN pioneer Novell) are also probably part of the app crowd, “since our fan base loves that kind of stuff.”

Tittle also said that Verizon Wireless helped pay for part of the Wi-Fi network’s construction, and like at other NFL stadiums where Verizon has done so, it gets a separate SSID for its users at LaVell Edwards Stadium. Verizon also built the stadium’s DAS (back in 2017), which also supports communications from AT&T and T-Mobile. (More photos below)

Under-seat AP enclosure

A peek inside

The social media ribbon board above the stands

LaVell Edwards Stadium at night, with a view of the press/suites structure

Filed Under: 4G LTE, Apps, AT&T, DAS, Extreme Networks, NCAA Football, Super Bowl, T-Mobile, Verizon Wireless, Wi-Fi Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Mercedes-Benz Stadium Wi-Fi saw 12 TB of data used at January’s college championship

December 2, 2018 by Leave a Comment

The iconic ‘halo board’ video screen below the unique roof opening at Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium. Credit all photos: Paul Kapustka, MSR (click on any picture for a larger image)

The Wi-Fi network at Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium saw 12 terabytes of data used at the 2018 College Football Playoff championship on Jan. 8, 2018, according to officals from the Atlanta Falcons, owners and operators of this city’s new distinctive venue.

We’d long suspected that Mercedes-Benz Stadium, which opened in August of 2017, had seen big data days inside the 71,000-seat arena with its innovative technology, but until Sunday the Falcons had never made any network-performance data publicly available. But a day after the venue saw another 8.06 TB of Wi-Fi used during the SEC Championship game, Danny Branch, chief information officer for AMB Sports & Entertainment, revealed the statistics during a live MSR visit at an Atlanta Falcons home game. The 12 TB mark (which was an estimate — we’ll check back with the Falcons for exact numbers) is the second-highest we’ve ever seen in our unofficial research of single-day Wi-Fi totals, trailing only the 16.31 TB recorded at Super Bowl LII in February at U.S. Bank Stadium.

“We’re confident and ready for the Super Bowl,” said Branch during a pregame stadium tour, details of which we’ll dig into deeper in a full profile for our upcoming Winter Stadium Tech Report. Multiple network speed tests taken by MSR during Sunday’s 26-16 Falcons loss to the visiting Baltimore Ravens showed robust Wi-Fi performance on the network that uses gear from Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company, in a design from AmpThink.

DAS renovation complete

An under-seat DAS antenna in the 300 seating section at Mercedes-Benz Stadium

According to Branch, the cellular distributed antenna system (DAS) network inside Mercedes-Benz — a deployment that is at the center of a current lawsuit filed by contractor IBM against gear supplier and designer Corning — is also now at full deployment, with the completion of 700 new under-seat DAS antenna deployments, mostly in the upper seating deck.

MSR speed tests taken during Sunday’s game showed a wide range of DAS results, from single-digit tests in some tough-deployment areas to results near 100 Mbps directly in front of what looked like some new antenna deployments. Again, look for more details in our upcoming profile in the Winter Stadium Tech Report (due out in mid-December).

“We’re in a good place [with the DAS],” said Branch, though he did say there was going to be more DAS work done on the outside of Mercedes-Benz Stadium prior to when Super Bowl LIII comes to the venue on Feb. 3, 2019, mainly to help ensure that the move toward more digital Super Bowl tickets goes smoothly. Mercedes-Benz Stadium also now has a couple of MatSing ball antennas in its rafters, there to bring DAS coverage to the sidelines of the playing field.

Sunday the Mercedes-Benz Stadium staffers were hosting a rare big-game back-to-back event, following Saturday’s packed-house tilt between SEC powers Alabama and Georgia, a championship-game rematch won by Alabama 35-28 after a dramatic comeback.

“That was a massive flip,” said Branch of the two-day stretch, which saw another huge data day Saturday with 8.06 TB of Wi-Fi used. The network, sponsored by backbone provider AT&T, averages about a 50 percent take rate from event attendees, according to Branch, who gave praise to Aruba and AmpThink for their combined deployment efforts.

“The expectation for fans now is that there will be Wi-Fi [in a sports venue],” said Branch. “But I love it when friends come to me after a game and tell me ‘the Wi-Fi is so fast!’ ”

THE MSR TOP 17 FOR WI-FI

1. Super Bowl 52, U.S. Bank Stadium, Minneapolis, Minn., Feb. 4, 2018: Wi-Fi: 16.31 TB
2. 2018 College Football Playoff Championship, Alabama vs. Georgia, Mercedes-Benz Stadium, Atlanta, Ga., Jan. 8, 2018: Wi-Fi: 12.0 TB*
3. Super Bowl 51, NRG Stadium, Houston, Feb. 5, 2017: Wi-Fi: 11.8 TB
4. Atlanta Falcons vs. Philadelphia Eagles, Lincoln Financial Field, Philadelphia, Pa., Sept. 6, 2018: Wi-Fi: 10.86 TB
5. Super Bowl 50, Levi’s Stadium, Santa Clara, Calif., Feb. 7, 2016: Wi-Fi: 10.1 TB
6. Taylor Swift Reputation Tour, Gillette Stadium, Foxborough, Mass., July 27, 2018: Wi-Fi: 9.76 TB
7. Minnesota Vikings vs. Philadelphia Eagles, NFC Championship Game, Lincoln Financial Field, Philadelphia, Pa., Jan. 21, 2018: Wi-Fi: 8.76 TB
8. Jacksonville Jaguars vs. New England Patriots, AFC Championship Game, Gillette Stadium, Foxborough, Mass., Jan. 21, 2018: Wi-Fi: 8.53 TB
9. Taylor Swift Reputation Tour, Broncos Stadium at Mile High, May 25, 2018: Wi-Fi: 8.1 TB
10. Kansas City Chiefs vs. New England Patriots, Gillette Stadium, Foxborough, Mass., Sept. 7, 2017: Wi-Fi: 8.08 TB
11. SEC Championship Game, Alabama vs. Georgia, Mercedes-Benz Stadium, Atlanta, Ga., Dec. 1, 2018: Wi-Fi: 8.06 TB*
12. Green Bay Packers vs. Dallas Cowboys, Divisional Playoffs, AT&T Stadium, Arlington, Texas, Jan. 15, 2017: Wi-Fi: 7.25 TB
13. Stanford vs. Notre Dame, Notre Dame Stadium, South Bend, Ind., Sept. 29, 2018: 7.19 TB
14. (tie) Southern California vs. Notre Dame, Notre Dame Stadium, South Bend, Ind., Oct. 21, 2017: 7.0 TB
Arkansas State vs. Nebraska, Memorial Stadium, Lincoln, Neb., Sept 2, 2017: Wi-Fi: 7.0 TB
15. WrestleMania 32, AT&T Stadium, Arlington, Texas, April 3, 2016: Wi-Fi: 6.77 TB
16. Wisconsin vs. Nebraska, Memorial Stadium, Lincoln, Neb., Oct. 7, 2017: Wi-Fi: 6.3 TB
17. Super Bowl 49, University of Phoenix Stadium, Glendale, Ariz., Feb. 1, 2015: Wi-Fi: 6.23 TB

* = pending official exact data

Filed Under: 4G LTE, AmpThink, Aruba, AT&T, DAS, Hewlett-Packard, NFL, Super Bowl, Wi-Fi Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

NFL CIO: Mercedes-Benz Stadium’s wireless is ‘ready for the Super Bowl’

November 19, 2018 by Leave a Comment

The entry concourse at Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium. Credit all photos: Paul Kapustka, MSR

The wireless networks at Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium are “ready for the Super Bowl,” according to Michelle McKenna, senior vice president and chief information officer for the NFL, who spoke to Mobile Sports Report via phone last week.

Though McKenna would not comment on any of the particulars of the recent lawsuit filed by IBM against Corning that revolves around issues with the stadium’s distributed antenna system (DAS) cellular network, she did assert that any past problems have since been fixed, and that the league is confident the venue’s wireless systems will stand up to the stress test that will likely arrive when Super Bowl LIII takes place on Feb. 3, 2019.

“The [Atlanta] Falcons have been super-cooperative in remedying one of the challenges they had,” said McKenna. “The networks will be ready for the Super Bowl.”

Mercedes-Benz Stadium also has an Aruba-based Wi-Fi network, which has not been the subject of any lawsuit; however, stadium officials have also not ever released any performance statistics for the network since the stadium’s opening. According to IBM’s lawsuit documents, the company said it had to pay extra to fix the DAS network, a task it said was completed before the end of the 2017 NFL season.

Outside connectivity a challenge as well

While the Super Bowl is almost always the biggest single-day sports events for wireless connectivity, McKenna added that this year’s version will be even a little more challenging than others since the league is in the process of moving fans to digital ticketing for its championship event.

“This year one of the new challenges is the move to paperless ticketing,” said McKenna in a wide-ranging interview about NFL technology issues (look for a full breakdown of the interview in our upcoming Winter Stadium Tech Report). Though this year’s game will still have some paper-based ticket options, McKenna said the lessons learned in ensuring good connectivity outside the stadium gates will help prepare for future Super Bowls, which will likely be all-digital ticketing.

One Super Bowl technology not yet decided is the game-day app, which for the past two years has been built by the NFL. In previous years, the league used versions of local game-day apps with Super Bowl additions, a direction McKenna said the league might still take this year. Designed mainly as a way to help visitors find their way around an unfamiliar stadium and city, the Super Bowl app this year might need to lean on the local app to help integrate the digital ticket functionality, McKenna said. The Falcons’ app for Mercedes-Benz Stadium was built by IBM.

Filed Under: 4G LTE, Apps, Aruba, DAS, NFL, Super Bowl, Wi-Fi Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Eagles fans use 10.86 TB of Wi-Fi at season opener

September 24, 2018 by Leave a Comment

Lincoln Financial Field, home of the Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles. Credit: Philadelphia Eagles

In their first regular season home game as defending Super Bowl champions, the Philadelphia Eagles saw their fans use 10.86 terabytes of Wi-Fi data at Lincoln Financial Field, the third-largest single-day total of Wi-Fi usage, trailing only the last two Super Bowls.

According to figures provided to Mobile Sports Report by the Eagles, an eye-opening 47,274 unique devices connected to the network at some point during the Eagles’ 18-12 victory over the Atlanta Falcons on Sept. 6, out of 69,696 in announced attendance. John Pawling, the Eagles’ vice president for information technology, also said the Eagles saw a peak concurrent connection of 36,829 devices on the Wi-Fi network, traffic that at one point “briefly maxed out” the Comcast-provided 10 Gbps backbone pipe that supports the stadium’s Wi-Fi network.

Since the night game was the NFL season opener and included the Eagles’ Super Bowl celebration ceremonies, Pawling expected a high amount of network traffic — they did, after all, see 8.76 TB of Wi-Fi used at the NFC Championship game back in January — but admitted the end result left him and his team “somewhat surprised.” One element that might have contributed to additional traffic was a pregame weather delay, time most likely spent online as fans waited for action to commence.

Everest network up to the test

An Everest Wi-Fi antenna points down at the stands. Credit: Everest Networks

The Sept. 6 game marked the start of the second full year for Lincoln Financial Field’s new Wi-Fi network, which uses gear from Everest Networks, a Silicon Valley startup company that was seed-funded by Panasonic, which acted as the exclusive distribution partner until earlier this year when Panasonic relinquished sole distribution rights to the Everest gear.

While Pawling said that the business of Everest leaving Panasonic caused “a little concern” last year, he said that from a technical perspective the Eagles “are dealing with the same people” at Everest as they did at Panasonic, and that there have been no issues that affected the network’s performance.

“It’s business as usual,” Pawling said. “It [the network] is rock solid. We’re very happy with it.”

Pawling said that the Eagles chose Everest a couple years ago during what he called a standard refresh review. Previously, the Eagles had used Extreme Networks gear for a Wi-Fi network put in place in 2013.

“We tend to look at 5 years as a technology’s horizon, and it was time to evaluate what was in the marketplace,” said Pawling. With its new design that puts four radios into a single AP and new antenna technology that theoretically has a farther reach than older equipment, the Panasonic/Everest gear won the Eagles’ bid.

“We did some tests with it [the Everest gear] and it seemed to handle things without a problem,” Pawling said. “We felt it fit our needs the best.”

Only 5 GHz in the bowl

Another Everest AP deployment. Credit: Everest Networks

According to Pawling, Lincoln Financial Field now has 683 Everest APs covering the entire building, a lower AP number than most venues that size because of the multiple radios in most units. Pawling said the entire deployment is top-down, and that the Eagles aren’t even using the 2.4 GHz radio in most of the Everest APs since the team only uses 5 GHz channels for the bowl. (The multiple-radio Everest APs have three 5 GHz radios and one 2.4 GHz radio.)

“It’s a plus, absolutely,” to have three radios in each AP, Pawling said, citing the reduced time needed to deploy fewer APs.

While the NFL opener now joins the top three in our unofficial list of top Wi-Fi events, we expect this list to change rapidly this year as it seems like the surge in mobile bandwidth demands at big events is still increasing rapidly. We can only imagine what might happen if Taylor Swift plays a halftime show at a big football game, but we can guess it would be a workout for any network currently in place.

THE MSR TOP 14 FOR WI-FI

1. Super Bowl 52, U.S. Bank Stadium, Minneapolis, Minn., Feb. 4, 2018: Wi-Fi: 16.31 TB
2. Super Bowl 51, NRG Stadium, Houston, Feb. 5, 2017: Wi-Fi: 11.8 TB
3. Atlanta Falcons vs. Philadelphia Eagles, Lincoln Financial Field, Philadelphia, Pa., Sept. 6, 2018: Wi-Fi: 10.86 TB
4. Super Bowl 50, Levi’s Stadium, Santa Clara, Calif., Feb. 7, 2016: Wi-Fi: 10.1 TB
5. Taylor Swift Reputation Tour, Gillette Stadium, Foxborough, Mass., July 27, 2018: Wi-Fi: 9.76 TB
6. Minnesota Vikings vs. Philadelphia Eagles, NFC Championship Game, Lincoln Financial Field, Philadelphia, Pa., Jan. 21, 2018: Wi-Fi: 8.76 TB
7. Jacksonville Jaguars vs. New England Patriots, AFC Championship Game, Gillette Stadium, Foxborough, Mass., Jan. 21, 2018: Wi-Fi: 8.53 TB
8. Taylor Swift Reputation Tour, Broncos Stadium at Mile High, May 25, 2018: Wi-Fi: 8.1 TB
9. Kansas City Chiefs vs. New England Patriots, Gillette Stadium, Foxborough, Mass., Sept. 7, 2017: Wi-Fi: 8.08 TB
10. Green Bay Packers vs. Dallas Cowboys, Divisional Playoffs, AT&T Stadium, Arlington, Texas, Jan. 15, 2017: Wi-Fi: 7.25 TB
11. (tie) Southern California vs. Notre Dame, Notre Dame Stadium, South Bend, Ind., Oct. 21, 2017: 7.0 TB
Arkansas State vs. Nebraska, Memorial Stadium, Lincoln, Neb., Sept 2, 2017: Wi-Fi: 7.0 TB
12. WrestleMania 32, AT&T Stadium, Arlington, Texas, April 3, 2016: Wi-Fi: 6.77 TB
13. Wisconsin vs. Nebraska, Memorial Stadium, Lincoln, Neb., Oct. 7, 2017: Wi-Fi: 6.3 TB
14. Super Bowl 49, University of Phoenix Stadium, Glendale, Ariz., Feb. 1, 2015: Wi-Fi: 6.23 TB

Filed Under: Extreme Networks, NFL, Super Bowl, Wi-Fi Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,

More MatSing antennas for Amalie Arena

September 4, 2018 by Leave a Comment

MatSing ball antennas seen behind championship banners at Amalie Arena. Credit all photos: MatSing (click on any photo for a larger image)

You may remember our profile from our current STADIUM TECH REPORT issue where we talked about MatSing antennas being deployed at Amalie Arena? Time for a quick update — instead of using just 20 of the big ball-shaped antennas for the new DAS, Amalie will instead have 52 MatSing antennas installed when all is said and done — a deployment that will be interesting to watch when it goes live later this fall.

Thanks to MatSing folks for the accompanying photos here of the MatSing antennas being deployed in Amalie, painted a nice shade of gray to blend in with the rooftop infrastructure. Fans may not know what the big ball shaped things are, but their cellular coverage should be good in the new AT&T-installed DAS.

Where else will we see MatSings being deployed? Independently Mobile Sports Report has learned that one integrator plans to purchase and use MatSing antennas in two arenas, one an NBA venue and the other a small-college stadium. Since the deals aren’t done we can’t name names yet but it will be interesting to watch where else MatSings end up.

Why use MatSing antennas? What sets MatSing ball antennas (also called “Luneberg Lens” antennas) apart from other wireless gear is the MatSing ball’s ability to provide a signal that can stretch across greater distances while also being highly concentrated or focused. According to MatSing its antennas can reach client devices up to 240 feet away; for music festivals, that means a MatSing antenna could be placed at the rear or sides of large crowd areas to reach customer devices where it’s unpractical to locate permanent or other portable gear. By being able to focus its communications beams tightly, a MatSing ball antenna can concentrate its energy on serving a very precise swath of real estate, as opposed to regular antennas which typically offer much less precise ways of concentrating or focusing where antenna signals go.

Lots of MatSings up in the rafters at Amalie Arena

MatSings are ready for their close-up

Lots of coverage coming from up above

Paint job helps MatSings blend in

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

Jared Miller leaves Falcons for Madison Square Garden

July 17, 2018 by Leave a Comment

Jared Miller, former chief digital officer for the Atlanta Falcons, has moved to a new job with Madison Square Garden. Credit: Paul Kapustka, MSR


In a personnel move that may have some technological impact on the upcoming year’s Super Bowl, former Atlanta Falcons chief digital officer Jared Miller is now executive vice president and chief operating officer at Madison Square Garden Ventures, according to Miller’s LinkedIn page.

We haven’t yet spoken to any of the principals involved, so more details will have to come at a later time (maybe at next week’s SEAT conference in Dallas, where the greater world of the sports technology marketplace regularly gathers). Miller, as those who read MSR know, was the point person for all technology deployments at Mercedes-Benz Stadium, the new roost for the Falcons that opened last summer and is scheduled to host Super Bowl 53 in February, 2019.

If history is any guide, the networking teams at MBS are likely already busy preparing for the NFL’s big game — in the recent past, carriers have used the offseason before a Super Bowl date to update the DAS inside Super Bowl venues, a task likely already underway in Atlanta. What’s not known is how Miller’s departure may or may not affect technology strategy decisions, either on the DAS side or on the Wi-Fi side of things. After touring MBS during a press day last summer, MSR did not receive any network-performance updates during the 2017 football season, despite repeated requests to stadium representatives, including Miller.

Mercedes-Benz Stadium also hosted the College Football Playoff championship game this past season, but for the first time in years the stadium hosting the game did not provide Wi-Fi usage statistics.

Filed Under: Aruba, DAS, NCAA Football, NFL, SEAT Conference, Super Bowl, Wi-Fi Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,
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