Verizon has spent two years preparing Phoenix and State Farm Stadium with the latest 5G tech for the Super Bowl. We got a chance to check it out and test the gigabit speeds ahead of the Big Game.
Ever go to a concert or sporting event, pay a fortune for tickets, and can’t get a signal on your phone to share a picture or video of the action? Verizon is tackling this issue head-on—starting with fans attending Super Bowl LVII at State Farm Stadium in Arizona.
The Super Bowl is one of the biggest sporting and cultural events to take place in the US every year. According to the NFL, more than 208 million Americans—about two-thirds of the country’s population—tuned in at some point on February 13, 2022, to watch Super Bowl LVI. That includes people who watched on TV in homes, bars, and restaurants, and those who streamed the game online.
Most viewers around the country don’t have to worry much about sharing the Super Bowl experience through their phones; they have non-congested home Wi-Fi to rely on. But 125,000 people on the ground in Phoenix—and particularly the expected 75,000 or more fans inside State Farm Stadium in Glendale—won’t have Wi-Fi and will instead need to rely on AT&T, T-Mobile, or Verizon for connectivity. And as you might have experienced at some point or other, cramming so many people into such a small area can often lead to poor wireless service for everyone. After all, cell sites can only handle so much traffic.
That’s why Verizon has spent the past two years preparing for Super Bowl LVII, boosting its 4G and 5G coverage not only in and around the stadium, but in downtown Phoenix as well. Verizon invited us to Phoenix to demonstrate what attendees can expect during the event—beyond the on-field action.Setting the StageState Farm Stadium
Though the Super Bowl is still two nearly two months out, Verizon already has some stats shaping the experience. For example, about 60% of the attendees of Super Bowl LVI, which took place at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, CA, used Verizon’s network on game day. Those fans saw peak speeds of 3.89Gbps during the game and consumed some 30.4TB of data both in and outside the stadium. Verizon says that represented a 20% increase over the 25.3TB of data usage at Super Bowl LV in 2021. The biggest surges in data consumption occurred during kickoff and during the halftime show, when fans streamed the experiences over social media.
According to Jeff Poloncak, senior manager of radio frequency at Verizon, « more than half » of the attendees at Super Bowl LVII will be Verizon users. More importantly, about half of those people will be equipped with a 5G-capable phone. Thinking ahead, if Verizon’s network sees another 20% year-over-year increase in data use, that means fans can devour as much as 36.5TB on game day. That’s why Verizon targeted both its 4G and 5G networks for improvement ahead of the game.Building a Speedier Stadium
Verizon has boosted its network at State Farm Stadium from the ground up. Starting with the fiber, the optical pipes that make high-speed internet service a reality (and which is shared to an extent by all three national wireless carriers), Verizon has ensured that it has the bandwidth needed to feed network traffic into and out of the stadium. The fiber pours capacity into the networking equipment placed around the arena, which is meant to provide fast access to fans at every level. 5G mmWave nodes positioned on the catwalk provide fast service to the upper seats
There are more than 460 5G nodes inside the stadium, including 66 new mmWave nodes for high-speed 5G service (mmWave 5G is deployed on extremely small wavelengths, 28GHz and 39GHz by Verizon). It’s capable of extreme speeds, but requires a line of site (meaning it doesn’t go through walls) and supports a limited number of users per node. Inside the stadium, the mmWave nodes are directional and many are placed close to the seats for clear access.
During tests of mmWave service in the empty stadium, PCMag recorded peak downloads of 3.99Gbps (using an Apple iPhone 14 Pro Max), with average mmWave downloads at 3.52Gbps. Uploads were much slower, peaking at 317Mbps and averaging 204Mbps via mmWave.
