Millions spent to beef up wireless for Super Bowl 50
SAN FRANCISCO — Wireless companies have been feverishly putting the finishing touches on upgrades to their systems as an expected 1 million Super Bowl fans descend on the Bay Area this week for concerts, parties, celebrations and, of course, a football game on Sunday.
The area has seen wireless demand "blow up" in the past few years, said Verizon executive director Phillip French as he gave a cell-view tour of the area around Super Bowl City in downtown San Francisco.
But the Super Bowl hordes are taking things to an entirely different level. One reason is that regular smart phone users tend to do more downloading than uploading.
During the Super Bowl that trend reverses, as fans send photos, videos and audio of what they're seeing to friends around the world.
"Look at the tourists. They're all walking around with their phones face-out, Facetiming, showing the folks back home where they are. It's very intensive use," French said.
To make sure everyone is able to post everything they want, when they want, providers are investing serious money.
AT&T has put $25 million into new wireless infrastructure in the area specifically to deal with Super Bowl traffic, while Verizon has invested $70 million more than it would have normally.
T-Mobile says it has added capacity on 150 cell sites and improved its antenna arrays.
Sprint has increased the capacity and coverage, adding more distributed antenna systems and bringing in 11 cell sites on wheels, the company said.
Cleverly disguised
Users likely won't notice much of the new infrastructure. French stopped in front of the Hyatt Regency in San Francisco, a hotel that looks out over one of the Super Bowl festivity hot spots on the Embarcadero, along the city's downtown waterfront.
He points at a longish box jutting unobtrusively off the side of the hotel, about two stories up.
It's actually a cell antenna, cleverly disguised as a part of the building. He notes two similar-sized antennas affixed to its right, looking a lot more like plywood boxes than Verizon's more camouflaged installation.
"Not everyone is as careful about blending in as we are," he said, declining to name names.
Super Bowl = super heavy usage
Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif., is the focal point of the game and of coverage efforts. Although the stadium itself is less than two years old, it still needed wireless upgrades because data usage by subscribers is increasing exponentially, said John Cooke, AT&T’s assistant vice president in charge of network engineering in the Bay Area.
AT&T has seen wireless demand increase 75% year-over-year at regular NFL games. For the Big Game, "there’s going to be even more of an increase," Cooke said.
Last year, when the Super Bowl was played in Phoenix, AT&T customers used 1.7 terabytes of data. "This year we expect it to be over 2 terabytes," Cooke said.
Beyond the stadium, wireless carriers are beefing up service at the area's three major airports — San Jose, Oakland and San Francisco — the freeways from those airports to Santa Clara and San Francisco, the Santa Clara convention center, San Francisco’s Moscone Center, the tip of Market Street that contains Super Bowl City and local hotels and malls.
"We take care of the customer experience from when they land at the airport to their hotel, concerts, celebration and then to the stadium and all points in between," said Cooke.
Almost all the installations are permanent, which will mean a serious upgrade for cell phone users in the Bay area after the Super Bowl crowds are long gone.
The only temporary installations are several COWs (cell-on-wheels) which are being installed at some airports, by the stadium and at Super Bowl City in downtown San Francisco. These can each handle up to 1,000 simultaneous connections.
"That’s all going to be foot traffic, so it will be a high concentration of individuals and high demand," said Cooke.
Normally these trailer-pulled cell towers are kept in storage to come out for special events such as big concerts and parades.
They also get heavy use in the summer and fall when they're trucked to wildfires "to aid communications for the fire teams," said French.
The big hit
Wireless traffic is expected to build all week "and crescendo as the weekend ends," said Cooke.
Based on past experience, there’s a big pulse of usages at kick off, but the absolute biggest crush of data will occur just as the half time show starts, said French.
"That’s when everyone starts sending all the pictures and video they shot during the first half," said French. "That's what we're building to handle."