Whether it’s a score-clinching update to friends, a live video of the band, or a selfie from the stands, sharing exciting moments from the game are important. And at the college championship, we know that ability is more important than ever.
Our customers are there for the experience. Be it the experience of seeing your team take the win, or the experience captured in a selfie. Or just the experience of attending a game in a stadium – and getting to share these moments. That’s what our customers are there for.
We’re here to make it happen – through the miracle of a network. And that’s exactly what my team does.
Fans flooded Tampa Bay decked in crimson and orange, to cheer on their team in one of the most highly-anticipated sporting events of the year—the College Football Playoff Championship.
No surprises here: Data usage spiked as fans shared their favorite plays, fight songs, quick videos and more from the game. It all flew across our network.
Where we come in
New technologies and apps are giving fans more ways to enjoy the game—and more ways to share it from their seats. We’re ready to handle this traffic boost with network upgrades across Tampa Bay.
We’ve made temporary and permanent upgrades for fans and the community. These include an upgraded Distributed Antenna System (DAS) at the stadium and temporary Cells on Wheels (COWs) throughout the Tampa Bay area.
With the influx of fans from across the U.S., I expected to see massive data usage on our network. And we weren’t disappointed– mobile data usage for the college football championship game and for the stadium in Tampa on our network, was a perfect score.
Record-setting data usage:
- Total data usage from the in-venue DAS serving the stadium and surrounding tailgate party areas was more than 3.8 TB that equals more than 11M social media photo posts.**
- Traffic compared to other recent football games:
- Traffic edged out last year’s College Football Playoff National Championship game in Glendale, Arizona by about 100%.
- Even more, data traffic was up a whopping 300% compared to the average college football game nationwide in 2016.
This fall, football again proved why it’s the king of sports. From the 563 games played at more than 100 pro and college stadiums where we have a venue-specific network, we saw more than 209 TB of total mobile data usage from our customers. That’s equal to nearly 600 million social media photo posts.*
That’s a lot of selfies!
Though the college football season has come to an end, more gridiron action awaits. It’s time to shift our view to Houston, Texas where my team is hard at work to ensure our network is ready for fans heading out to pro football’s “Big Game.” This February, get ready to share this once-in-a-lifetime experience.
And our network will be there to make sure you can.
Footnotes:
*All data metrics come from only venues with a DAS where AT&T’s mobile network is on-air. These metrics are not comprehensive of every game played during this season for college or pro football
**All figures include only data traffic from AT&T customers on AT&T’s venue-specific mobile network
Paula Doublin - Assistant Vice President Construction & Engineering