3 ms·

The amount of Uber and Lyft drivers that have told me how cellular reception near sports stadiums are atrocious tells me that these FCC fines are not deterring

The amount of Uber and Lyft drivers that have told me how cellular reception near sports stadiums are atrocious tells me that these FCC fines are not deterring those with sufficiently deep pockets.

mschuster91 3y ago
Different root cause - stadiums concentrate an absurd amount of people in a very small space, and people aren't going to a stadium to watch sports, they are there to make selfies, videos, even livestreams for Instagram, Snapchat or Tiktok so they need a lot of bandwidth. Ideally, the operators of such venues would go and place an appropriate amount of picocells inside the stadium, but these cost a ton of money to install and they are only used maybe once a week for two hours, so there is no financial incentive for the providers (particularly if the general public has gotten so accustomed with a baseline of enshittification that they don't even protest any more). For example, take the Munich Oktoberfest. The Theresienwiese is 42ha large and fits about 600.000 people without tents or ~200.000 in the full Oktoberfest buildout - and each year, every provider literally spins up hundreds of cells of all sizes, to accomodate the up to 20, 30 terabytes of data each day that all these people create [1]. But since that is two weeks of full load, it's worth the effort in the end financially. [1] https://www.golem.de/news/netzabdeckung-mobilfunk-beim-oktoberfest-wie-eine-mittelgrosse-stadt-2209-168203.html https://www.golem.de/news/netzabdeckung-mobilfunk-beim-oktob...
- bluGill 3y ago
  AT&T has microcells in a box that you can get them to install for you large events and then return at the end of the event. You can even set who is allowed to connect so you can demonstrate your cell device works at a trade show while not having to deal with other cell phones. I don't know why they don't bring them to sporting events and then take them out at the end. Probably labor.
  - kjs3 3y ago
    When I worked for Cingular Wireless pre-AT&T, we had everything from femtocells (the last 2 stalls in the bathroom don't have service) to full cell sites with their own power source on 18 wheelers they'd roll up for big events, and a dedicated team of engineers and techs to support it. It was a huge help, but at the end of the day bandwidth is still finite no matter how many cells you stick in and around the stadium.
    - calebio 3y ago
      I'm curious, what did the uplink look like for those 18 wheelers?
      - kjs3 3y ago
        Back in those days, a mixed bag depending on what was available at the venue and dependent on what the responsible LEC could provision (hence the need for some specialist engineers to be involved). Stadiums in particular are usually quite well equipped from a telco perspective. Could be anything from N x T-1s or DS-3s to fiber ATM to more esoteric stuff like SMDS and point-to-point microwave. Once IP became the de facto transport I'm guessing there was more stuff like MetroE and frame relay, and these days I imagine they just plug in some multiGbps fiber and ride IP back to the mothership.
cenamus 3y ago
But that's clearly just because of 10s or 100s of thousands of mobile devices in the area, why would they care about that?
- tareqak 3y ago
  Even when there are no events in those stadiums? It might be the word of these drivers against the stadium owners/operators, but I am still willing to entertain these accounts enough to see people perform preliminary investigations. I would like to see signal strength maps across different times of the day and week for each of the major cellular providers in an around these venues and compare them to comparable maps for busy downtown areas. I assume some of this data is already collected by each individual cellular service provider for their own network in order to access performance and areas of future investment.

The amount of Uber and Lyft drivers that have told me how cellular reception near sports stadiums are atrocious tells me that these FCC fines are not deterring those with sufficiently deep pockets.

mschuster91 3y ago

Different root cause - stadiums concentrate an absurd amount of people in a very small space, and people aren't going to a stadium to watch sports, they are there to make selfies, videos, even livestreams for Instagram, Snapchat or Tiktok so they need a lot of bandwidth. Ideally, the operators of such venues would go and place an appropriate amount of picocells inside the stadium, but these cost a ton of money to install and they are only used maybe once a week for two hours, so there is no financial incentive for the providers (particularly if the general public has gotten so accustomed with a baseline of enshittification that they don't even protest any more). For example, take the Munich Oktoberfest. The Theresienwiese is 42ha large and fits about 600.000 people without tents or ~200.000 in the full Oktoberfest buildout - and each year, every provider literally spins up hundreds of cells of all sizes, to accomodate the up to 20, 30 terabytes of data each day that all these people create [1]. But since that is two weeks of full load, it's worth the effort in the end financially. [1] https://www.golem.de/news/netzabdeckung-mobilfunk-beim-oktoberfest-wie-eine-mittelgrosse-stadt-2209-168203.html https://www.golem.de/news/netzabdeckung-mobilfunk-beim-oktob...

bluGill 3y ago
AT&T has microcells in a box that you can get them to install for you large events and then return at the end of the event. You can even set who is allowed to connect so you can demonstrate your cell device works at a trade show while not having to deal with other cell phones. I don't know why they don't bring them to sporting events and then take them out at the end. Probably labor.
- kjs3 3y ago
  When I worked for Cingular Wireless pre-AT&T, we had everything from femtocells (the last 2 stalls in the bathroom don't have service) to full cell sites with their own power source on 18 wheelers they'd roll up for big events, and a dedicated team of engineers and techs to support it. It was a huge help, but at the end of the day bandwidth is still finite no matter how many cells you stick in and around the stadium.
  - calebio 3y ago
    I'm curious, what did the uplink look like for those 18 wheelers?
    - kjs3 3y ago
      Back in those days, a mixed bag depending on what was available at the venue and dependent on what the responsible LEC could provision (hence the need for some specialist engineers to be involved). Stadiums in particular are usually quite well equipped from a telco perspective. Could be anything from N x T-1s or DS-3s to fiber ATM to more esoteric stuff like SMDS and point-to-point microwave. Once IP became the de facto transport I'm guessing there was more stuff like MetroE and frame relay, and these days I imagine they just plug in some multiGbps fiber and ride IP back to the mothership.

cenamus 3y ago

But that's clearly just because of 10s or 100s of thousands of mobile devices in the area, why would they care about that?

tareqak 3y ago
Even when there are no events in those stadiums? It might be the word of these drivers against the stadium owners/operators, but I am still willing to entertain these accounts enough to see people perform preliminary investigations. I would like to see signal strength maps across different times of the day and week for each of the major cellular providers in an around these venues and compare them to comparable maps for busy downtown areas. I assume some of this data is already collected by each individual cellular service provider for their own network in order to access performance and areas of future investment.