The 49ers’ plan to build the greatest stadium Wi-Fi network of all time
Joyce Park stashed this in Tech biz
Stashed in: 49ers!, Silicon Valley!
A terabit of capacity means you'll be able to upload your photos right from your seat!
Sounds like this is going to cost a small fortune to build.
It also sounds like they are committed:
An expansive Wi-Fi network at this year's Super Bowl in the New Orleans Superdome was installed to allow as many as 30,000 fans to get online at once. This offloaded traffic from congested cellular networks and gave fans the ability to view streaming video or do other bandwidth-intensive tasks meant to enhance the in-game experience. (Don't scoff—as we've noted before, three-plus-hour NFL games contain only 11 minutes of actual game action, or a bit more if you include the time quarterbacks spend shouting directions at teammates at the line of scrimmage. There is plenty of time to fill up.)
Superdome officials felt a network allowing 30,000 simultaneous connections would be just fine, given that the previous year's Super Bowl saw only 8,260 at its peak. They were generally right, as the network performed well, even for part of the game's power outage.
The New England Patriots installed a full-stadium Wi-Fi network this past season as well. It was never used by more than 10,000 or so people simultaneously, or by more than 16,000 people over the course of a full game. "Can 70,000 people get on the network at once? The answer to that is no," said John Brams, director of hospitality and venues at the Patriots' network vendor, Enterasys. "If everyone tried to do it all at once, that's probably not going to happen."
But as more fans bring smart devices into stadiums, activities like viewing instant replays or live camera angles available only to ticket holders will become increasingly common. It'll put more people on the network at once and require bigger wireless pipes. So if Williams and Malik have their way, every single 49ers ticket holder will enjoy a wireless connection faster than any wide receiver sprinting toward the end zone.
"Is it really possible to give Wi-Fi to 68,500 fans at once?" I asked. I expected some hemming and hawing about how the 49ers will do their best and that not everyone will ever try to use the network at once anyway.
"Yes. We can support all 68,500," Williams said emphatically.
How?
"How not?" he answered.
Won't you have to limit the capacity each fan can get?
Again, absolutely not. "Within the stadium itself, there will probably be a terabit of capacity. The 68,500 will not be able to penetrate that. Our intentions in terms of Wi-Fi are to be able to provide a similar experience that you would receive with LTE services, which today is anywhere from 20 to 40 megabits per second, per user.
"The goal is to provide you with enough bandwidth that you would saturate your device before you saturate the network," Williams said. "That's what we expect to do."
Fans won't be limited by what section they're in, either. If the 49ers offer an app that allows fans to order food from their seats, or if they offer a live video streaming app, they'll be available to all fans.
Pure confidence. I LOVE THAT!
Utter crap... on what planet have they altered the the laws of physics to accommodate more than a dozen or so 802.11 radios on a channel?There is a reason why public wifi always sucks... because the protocol wasn't designed for mass consumption!
Maybe they're using some other technologies and just calling it "WiFi"?
Has anyone ever built this kind of scale before for a stadium?
4:01 PM Mar 19 2013