Like San Francisco Giants pitcher Madison Bumgarner, the wireless network at San Francisco’s AT&T park put in some major-league overtime during the World Series. The carrier said its customers used an average of 447 gigabytes per game during the three World Series games played at the Giants’ home stadium. That’s more than twice as much as was used at the average game during the final home series of the regular season.
“We uploaded more than we downloaded,” said Bill Schlough, CIO for the San Francisco Giants. “At a typical game, everybody wants to see what’s going on, maybe stream another game, communicate with someone else, but during the World Series here everyone wanted to share that experience with others.”
Schlough led the charge to install a distributed antenna system (DAS) at AT&T Park after noticing that he was not interrupted by his cellphone during a 2009 game. “I found out the reason my phone didn’t ring was because my phone didn’t work,” he said. “I called AT&T and said ‘What are we going to do here?’ and they said you need to put in a distributed antenna system.”
Competing with the couch
Schlough would be at the Giants games whether his phone worked or not, but he knows that is not true for many fans.
“If you can’t stay connected at the game, you’re not going to come to the game, and that experience on the couch is more and more compelling,” Schlough said, noting that HDTV is making the home viewing experience even more compelling.
“DAS is one of our key weapons to compete with the couch,” said Schlough, and it seems to have worked during the recent World Series. More than 43,000 fans showed up on Oct. 25 and uploaded the equivalent of 1.36 million photos to social media sites.
Wi-Fi use surges
AT&T says its Wi-Fi network at the stadium moved roughly 1,626 gigabytes of data during the game on Oct. 25, the largest amount in the park’s history. The carrier says Wi-Fi use was up 302% from the 2012 World Series. AT&T has 334 hidden Wi-Fi access points in and around the ballpark.
“Whether it’s a DAS or a Wi-Fi network or a cellular antenna, the fans don’t care; fans just need to stay connected at the ballpark,” said Schlough.
