Network Testing at Newest NFL Stadium

[EarDemon]

I took the short drive to the NFLs newest stadium today, the Bedpan, aka the new Highmark Stadium. Zero interest in the team or the stadium my tax dollars shouldn't have funded, but wanted to see what the network connectivity was like.

There's a cell tower near one of the south entrances of the stadium that is loaded up with gear and panels that are pretty new. Looking at the Google Street View image of it from last July, it looks pretty naked compared to what it is like now. Numerous times I've seen Crown Castle trucks in the area, so they have been working on getting the infrastructure up to snuff. There are two racks on it, one is Verizon for sure, the other is AT&T I'm guessing. All around the property I was pulling strong mid band from all three providers, Verizon and AT&T were always over 1 Gbps, T-Mobile surprisingly never broke 1 Gbps, I was able to get 1.5 Gbps down the road a bit where I've hit that speed in the past. Once I got near the tower, instant mmWave on Verizon that completely blew me away. I'm disappointed no mmWave from AT&T, I was hoping there would be.

I'm assuming there's an in stadium DAS for Verizon and possibly AT&T. T-Mobile typically shy's away doing them.

 

[Neutron]

The cell companies need more of this at the stadiums. My daughter and I went to a Penn State game two years ago and there were so many people there, over 100k as is usual for one of their games, and the cell signal was non-existent for Verizon.

 

[EarDemon]

Verizon seems to be making great strides in added capacity to extremely high traffic areas. Bringing in COWs will only do so much, but having 5 Gbps of available capacity will do wonders for those at the event and those who live/work near by. This is why mmWave exists. I would love to see what performance is like at a game, without actually going to the game, or dealing with the traffic.

Our Six Flags is in a rural location, as far as I can tell no mmWave. All three have mid band active there, but backhaul appears to be only 1 Gbps.