The majority of the three nationwide carriers’ capability for Tremendous Bowl 57 is on their 5G networks
The Philadelphia Eagles and the Kansas Metropolis Chiefs aren’t the one ones who’ve been getting ready for this weekend’s Tremendous Bowl LVII—operators have been constructing out extra capability for the previous 12 months or extra, forward of the marquee soccer occasion of the 12 months that places extremely excessive stress on wi-fi networks in and across the stadium.
T-Cellular US stated that it has spent the previous 12 months doing work within the Phoenix, Arizona space that has amped up speeds by “10x inside State Farm Stadium and by 4x throughout the area,” together with 2.5 GHz help on indoor and outside Distributed Antenna Programs, launching 600 megahertz of millimeter-wave spectrum and capability upgrades with small cells, new websites and “enhanced backhaul”. AT&T says it has added 1000’s of antennas inside and out of doors the stadium, together with 64 outside antennas supported by 15 miles of fiber and energy cabling and capability enhancements throughout its 700 MHz, midband and mmWave 5G in addition to its LTE community, and extra deployables to help public security communications throughout the metro Phoenix space. Verizon, in the meantime, says that it put in round 1,400 mmWave antennas within the higher and decrease bowls of the stadium, plus extra antennas on the concourses, to a density of 1 antenna serving about 38 prospects; and carried its mmWave and C-Band capability enhancements to central areas of Phoenix in addition to neighboring cities for a constant expertise.
Community testing and evaluation agency Alerts Analysis Group occurred to be in Phoenix in mid-January, and put out a report this week on its observations on carriers’ out there capability primarily based on drive-testing across the stadium, utilizing a Rohde & Schwarz scanner in addition to Samsung Galaxy S22 smartphones for every provider to have a look at out there energetic spectrum and capability.
The report’s findings are particular to capability exterior the stadium and doesn’t account for in-building property that can enhance capability additional, or for deployable property, resembling Cells on Wheels (COWs) that will have been deployed to the positioning, or turned up, after SRG’s go to.
Among the many findings of curiosity:
-For all three operators, SRG estimated that 5G accounted for greater than 75% of their potential community capability.
-For T-Cellular US specifically, its mid-band 5G spectrum property accounted for 97% of its potential capability, and for AT&T, its mid-band 5G holdings present round 90% of its whole 5G capability (SRG additionally encountered some AT&T mmWave websites in its drive-testing.)
-Verizon’s 5G accounted for 77% of its out there capability, principally as a result of its “heavy use of CBRS spectrum, which gave it a lot increased LTE capability than its friends,” SRG stated. By SRG’s reckoning, CBRS-related radio property accounted for almost half (49%) of Verizon’s out there LTE capability. In the meantime, Verizon’s 5G mmWave spectrum represented 69% of its out there 5G capability.
-SRG made observe {that a} current software program replace to the Galaxy S22 smartphones that it utilized in testing allowed the usage of AT&T’s new 3.45 GHz spectrum for aggregation with different bands.
Extra particulars from SRG right here.