Super Bowl. Super Connectivity 

WIA’s mantra is Connectivity Everywhere – every person, every organization, everything, connected everywhere. That theme was on full display in New Orleans for the Super Bowl as carriers and their infrastructure partners used every tool available to win the connectivity game.  

Each year, the Super Bowl provides about three and a half hours of entertainment for tens of thousands of people in attendance and millions of people watching from afar. But years of work go into making sure the Big Game is a perfectly orchestrated event on the world’s biggest stage. For the wireless industry, those years of work translate into a seamlessly connected experience for fans, teams, and the media covering the game and incredible wireless connectivity for city residents for years after. 

I had the privilege of seeing some of this work in person with Verizon engineers Leo Perreault and Sandra Loughridge just days before Super Bowl Sunday earlier this month. The entire company, as it does with every Super Bowl, had been working to create the best possible network experience for everybody at the game, at the events leading up to the game inside and outside the Caesars Superdome, and at hotels and venues in and around New Orleans. Verizon upgraded the system at New Orleans International Airport with high-speed MMW radios in addition to C-Band to ensure visitors had superior connectivity from the time they hit the ground through the time they left the city. 

All of the upgraded infrastructure will be a long-term benefit for the community. 

It was a logistical feat when you consider that engineers had to work around not only a $560 million renovation of the Superdome but also a multitude of events that required continuity of coverage and capacity during the months leading up to the Super Bowl. And it wasn’t just the stadium that got a wireless infrastructure overhaul. 

Ernest N. Morial Convention Center housed a media row and the Super Bowl Experience – which featured interactive games for fans, player autographs, and photos with the Vince Lombardi Trophy. The convention center is connected with a recently upgraded distributed antenna system (DAS) connecting Verizon, T-Mobile and AT&T.  

Verizon’s network in the convention center is optimized for customers to primarily use its C-band spectrum, but the DAS radios and small cells deployed every couple hundred feet along Convention Center Drive incorporate multiple spectrum bands. Verizon added multiple millimeter-wave radios in the convention center to enhance coverage. It also upgraded capacity in other highly trafficked areas, including in the French Quarter, where a festival and parade were held in advance of the Big Game. In other areas, to address short-term needs, a Cell Site on Wheels was brought in.   

While walking the convention center floor, I met with a team of Verizon engineers who were analyzing and testing the company’s 5G network to make sure it was working perfectly. Their speed tests showed over 3 Gbps download and several hundred megabits per second upload, consistent with my own tests and what fans experienced. 

At the Superdome, every single inch of the stadium was well covered with wireless infrastructure, from the field to the press box, all of the suites and common areas. Verizon deployed more than 500 Ultrawideband MMW radios and 155 C-band radios connected to the DAS, which is owned by AT&T. The neutral-host DAS had a complete upgrade prior to the game including 34 high-power MatSing Lens Antennas and 255 additional low-power antennas. 

In addition, Verizon has deployed 560 miles of fiber in the city that connects directly into a brand new headend at the stadium. Multiple spherical MatSing Lens antennas hang from the roof of the Superdome, each beaming radio signal into specific areas to ensure every fan, every player, every reporter and every application is well connected. In fact, Verizon actively encouraged its customers to use its 5G cellular network instead of the stadium’s Wi-Fi system, citing better, more reliable performance. 

And once again, the data coming in after the Super Bowl demonstrates that connectivity is crucial at events like the Super Bowl. The industry delivered! Verizon customers in New Orleans used 93.5 terabytes (TB) of data on Super Bowl Sunday, including 38.1 TB of data in and around the stadium. Median download speeds on Verizon’s network were nearly 1.8 Gbps, while upload speeds averaged about 159 Mbps with peak download speeds of over 4.1 Gbps and upload speeds of 1.1 Gbps. 

AT&T reportedly installed 34 high-power radios for seating areas and 255 low-power radios for back-of-house and concourse zones which handled 29 TB of data, a new record at the Superdome for the company. That is the equivalent of streaming nearly 7.2 million hours of music or posting 5.8 million social posts with photos. 

T-Mobile also upgraded its 5G coverage and capacity at its macro cell sites in areas surrounding the event and mmWave inside the stadium and nearby venues. The company invested $290 million in infrastructure upgrades throughout Louisiana last year. 

It was great to see all of it in person. The sheer volume of radios is impressive, and you have to imagine the fact that they’re literally installing all those, testing each of them, and making sure that they all work as intended. They’re really targeted to a very specific area on the field or in the building, and it all works. 

Yet another example of incredible work over many years by the employees of the carriers, the infrastructure companies, the radio and antenna manufacturers and so many others that make it all possible. The average consumer and policy maker doesn’t appreciate all the incredible work that makes Connectivity Everywhere possible. I do, and the team at WIA does, and we are honored to keep telling our industry’s incredible story  

Now, all eyes are on Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California, where wireless infrastructure is already being upgraded for Super Bowl 60 next year, where hopefully the hometown 49ers will retake their proper place in the Super Bowl.