Indianapolis prides itself on being one of the best host cities for big events, and AT&T, an NCAA corporate champion, jumped right on board during the Final Four. The telecommunications giant doubled its cell coverage throughout downtown Indianapolis and at Lucas Oil Stadium in anticipation of big crowds last week.
CELLULAR DATA
A few numbers from the weekend in Indianapolis:
■ 352 — Number of DAS antennas in Lucas Oil Stadium, which is enough to service a town the size of Bloomington, Ind. (pop. 82,575).
■ 43 — Number of Wi-Fi access points AT&T has in downtown Indianapolis.
■ 1.52 — Terabytes of data used over the three games, the most ever for a Final Four on AT&T’s network.
■ 300 — Percent increase in data used over the last four Final Fours.
“We want to give fans at a big event the same mobile experience they’re used to every day,” said Bill Medford, an AT&T network manager in Indianapolis.
After the Colts’ season ended, AT&T’s network team went into the stadium and doubled the distributed antenna system capacity for mobile Internet traffic. Increasing DAS capacity allows fans to send photos, surf the Web and operate apps more quickly on their smartphones. Medford said enhancing connectivity for big events is one of AT&T’s greatest nationwide priorities.
The enhancements are good for AT&T customers only, but AT&T’s competition, like Verizon, has the same opportunity inside the stadium and around town.
AT&T said data usage in the stadium peaked from 7-8 p.m. on Saturday, essentially the second half of the Duke-Michigan State semifinal. Duke blew out the Spartans, which would explain why so many fans were on their phone.
