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Once upon a time, football stadiums would light up with camera flashbulbs as fans tried to capture the excitement from the stands. But now, touchdowns are tweeted, punts are posted and interceptions are Instagrammed by the thousands of fans using countless smartphones, tablets and digital devices. Thousands more are multitasking during the game using Verizon’s NFL Mobile app in real time to keep tabs on the entire league, breaking news and their fantasy football standings.
In order to handle this heavy data load, we continuously explore ways to enhance our networks so fans can experience and share every moment in the fastest, most reliable way possible.
Most recently, we teamed up with Mobilitie to amplify the wireless network at the Edward Jones Dome, home of the St. Louis Rams. Mobilitie is considered an industry leader in mobile connectivity at large scale events (such as football games), and we worked together to bring a high-capacity wireless infrastructure to the enormous venue.
We achieved a “heavy duty” network at the Edward Jones Dome by installing our network system and tapping into Mobilitie’s DAS infrastructure. The DAS includes separate antennas located throughout the venue to boost network strength and capacity, which distributes the cell site signal in a manner that provides superior performance and capacity gains over a normal cell site serving the track from outside the venue. This allows thousands of fans to send pictures, text, post, call and share the event at the same time.
After completion, the network improvements at the Edward Jones Dome resulted in 2.5 times more traffic than the average event. There was near record mobile data traffic during the October 13 St. Louis Rams game against the San Francisco 49ers.
To put this into perspective, an “average event” at the Edward Jones Dome includes a Rams game with 66,000 fired up football fans and more than 53,000 screaming One Direction fans at a sold out concert. With nearly everyone in attendance using their smart devices at the exact same time, capacity crowds count on a “heavy duty” network that can get the job done, and we are happy to have made that possible.
This new progress builds upon an evolving and demanding network in the Rams’ home state of Missouri that began with the introduction of our 4G LTE network in 2010, followed by XLTE added bandwidth in May 2014. We’re proud to offer Missourians the latest in speed and video-rich data services!
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