With the ExteNet DAS deployment at the Barclays Center earning the distinction of providing the fastest cellular speeds of any NBA arena, company officials attribute its success to a strong partnership with the venue owner along with complimentary network services.
The Barclays Center in Brooklyn, N.Y., opened its doors in September 2012 for a Jay-Z concert. The arena is home for the Brooklyn Nets professional basketball team and, next year, will host the New York Islanders of the National Hockey League.
Steve Kingwell, ExteNet VP of implementation and engineering, told RCR Wireless News that the Barclays deployment includes 18 high-powered nodes, 207 antennas, 105,000 feet of coaxial cable and 8,000 feet of fiber optic cable with varying strand counts.
“One of the keys for us, when we did the initial engineering on it, we had a really terrific relationship,” with the owner, Kingwell said. “We encountered very few if any restrictions on what we could do as far as antenna placement. We were able to place antennas in optimal locations. They basically gave us the run of the place.”
Jon Davis, ExteNet’s VP of in-building solutions, echoed Kingwell’s sentiments about collaboration.
“In this instance,” Davis continued, “we also had the benefit of a Wi-Fi network,” supplied by Cisco Systems. “I think the combination of a Wi-Fi distributed network that supports cellular, those two networks (working together) is really an optimal solution.”
The Barclays ranking came out of a report prepared by Wefi. According to that analysis, the Barclays Center offers a Wi-Fi speed of 5.09 Mbps and a cell speed of 3.66 Mbps.
Wefi found that the most used apps in the buildings the company surveyed were Verizon Messages, Snapchat, ESPN Fantasy Football, Facebook and Instagram.
Looking ahead at in-building connectivity trends, Davis and Kingwell agree that consumers are eager for the service, which is prompting venue owners to upgrade, and that providing both Wi-Fi and cellular is key.
“I think fans are going to be clamoring for that type of service and experience for years to come,” Davis said.
“It might have been, at one point, a Wi-Fi-only approach,” Kingwell said, or “a cellular-only approach, but I think now the industry realizes, to get the optimal experience, it has got to be a combination of the two networks. I think you’ll continue to see investments on both sides. I think the more people stream, the better the devices get, the more challenges it will create.”
ExteNet has taken on many high-profile in-building design/installs. RCR Wireless had the chance to tour the ExteNet deployment at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago.
For more on ExteNet DAS, check out the RCR Wireless News YouTube channel.
