Your Sprint Reception at You NFL Stadium?

[TREV21]

So, Last week I was at my second game up at Lambeau field. Well for second straight time I decided that I would test this phone well at a game. Here was my outcome. Green Bay no 4G, okay I could live with that, I guess the 3G would have to do.

Keep in mind this is my first smart phone and last year I sat there with AT&T and a Moto Razr, watching everyone else play on their smart phones and keep trrack of other games around the league.

I walked into Lambeau with a fully charged EVO around 11:00 AM, first observation was that all y sports apps were very slow, didn't even bother with trying the internet to catch up. When I got a signal the score apps were very slow to synch up.

Shot a few pics to post on facebook...that failed until I left and was outside a few miles from Lambeau. The part that killed me the most was battery died with about 7 minutes left in the fourth quarter. All in all 100% to dead in about four hours. I would venture to guess that most of that was drainage due to signal searching from the phone. Yes, I know $10 extra for the 4G experience. (HA HA!).

I wonder what Sprint is doing around NFL stadium, because it's not working in Green Bay. At this point I'm looking at least at a battery upgrade to make through a game.

Also I hate looking at the Verizon sign at Lambeau! So what are your results like. Anyone else at Lambeau having these issues?

 

[batgeek]

can't tell ya. i'm displaced from San Diego. but i sure do like the 4G at Richmond Int Raceway.

 

[ScorpDX]

70,000+ phones all in the same place all trying to keep synced up with their respective networks all via the same tower is going to cause some signal loss!

 

[vicshalls]

I am in houston and went to the dallas texans game on sunday. I had the same problem but then again so did my friend with her I phone. I work down the street from reliant and never have a problem. I figured they had the signal jammed so all the news people would have enough band width to broadcast. Could be wrong but glad to know it was not just us that had a problem. As that it was not just sprint.

 

[Calyspo421]

I feel your pain. And am not very positive about a change any time soon. The network was WAY overloaded at the season opener & I had to use Mr. Calypso's carrier (Cellcom) to check in with the kiddies. NOT cool. Especially in light of this fact- hubby had Sprint a few YEARS ago and this was the deciding factor for him to dump the service. I can tell you that knowing they have not addressed/mitigated the issue make dumping Sprint an easy decision as soon as I can do so penalty free. I hate the politics associated with Verizon's PAC policies, but morals be damned, it's coverage I need. Sorry Sprint/Credo, I'm with you in spirit only, because you are not with me in service.

And I know the opener had more ppl using than the 70k + capacity of Lambeau- but we are talking YEARS of not dealing with this gap in service and responsiveness by the company. Buh-bye as of Feb. '12.

 

[stevenw00]

Once you realize the stadium doesn't have 4G, shut it off. Your battery will last twice as long. Unless you were listening to the radio or constantly trying to update your scores, there is no reason your battery shouldn't have lasted 4 hours.

 

[jasonacg]

Same issue here last night, as I enjoyed watching the Bucs beat the Colts from a stadium seat, instead of my living room.

Tampa is a 4G city, and the stadium is firmly in 4G territory. Signals on 4G were all over the map, from full to nothing. Same for 3G/voice reception. I didn't make any phone calls, but tried to do some data. Uploading pictures was spotty at best, and oddly enough, I had more success with Google Plus (albeit fewer attempts) than with Facebook, where most pictures never made it through, on either 3G or 4G. I ended up going from a full battery on arrival at the stadium. to less than 10% by the time the game ended. To be fair, my sister's T-Mobile device ran into similar problems.

If one out of every 10 spectators has a Sprint phone, that would still be about 5,000 phones on a few local cell sites. I don't know what today's capacity is for an average site, but I can say, it's not enough to support a large gathering.

As a side note, my office is less than three miles from the stadium. On any other day, I have reliable, and semi-consistent speeds on both 3G and 4G from that same area.

 

[ASC]

You're not alone. I'm on Verizon with a Droid X and I've have the same problems in Phoenix at DiamondBacks games and at the SuperCross races. Haven't been to a Cardinals game in a couple years though.

 

[jasonacg]

I'm starting to wonder how much of it is due to excessive traffic, and how much might simply be RF overload, from so many signals in a very confined area?

 

[evolution3d]

I was at the Rays baseball game yesterday. I had 4 or 5 bars on 3G but trying to load webpages was painfully slower than usual. Most likely congestion on the network. I switched on 4G and was delighted to find full WiMAX signal and my pages loaded very snappy.

 

[CarrieK]

I had 4G at LP Field at the Titans game a couple of weeks ago. Of course, that could be because we have seats up in the nosebleed section

 

[jasonacg]

I was at the Rays baseball game yesterday. I had 4 or 5 bars on 3G but trying to load webpages was painfully slower than usual. Most likely congestion on the network. I switched on 4G and was delighted to find full WiMAX signal and my pages loaded very snappy.

There were probably half the people at Tropicana Field, than at Raymond James Stadium. (If they can't pack that place with a winning record/playoffs, what will it take?!)

Everything was back to normal for me, when I was back in the same area for work the next day. I wonder if they have the ability to increase the number of cell sites around big stadiums...not as much for coverage, but for capacity? And would it make a difference? Hopefully, Network Vision will help to address that.

 

[Amateur_extra]

I was at Lambeau yesterday (Oct-8-2011) for a wedding, and I used Sprint 4g to run a live webcast without a problem. I think I had 3 bars on 4g, averaging about 1.5 Mb/s upload for around 25 mins, using my HTC Evo. This amount of load on my stock battery took it from full to under 50% in about 30 mins.

The major problem during a game is spectrum. Spectrum is expensive, VERY expensive. Sprint owns the most spectrum suitable for 4g (WiMAX) usage. BUT, I am not sure, it looks like the site for sprint 4g in Green Bay, is a small site, not designed to handle more than 5k (or so, maybe less) connections. So yes, your handset has a problem getting a time slot on the 4g tower. It can "hear" it, just can not handshake.

The other carriers, are maxed out on their spectrum. Putting in more standard towers would not help. Its like a highway, think of a two lane county road. There is only a certain amount of traffic load the road can handle before it must me upgraded to a 4 lane highway. But they are not going to upgrade the road for a few hours 8 days a year.

Much like spectrum, they buy it from FCC to use it. Anymore a few Mhz of spectrum (in the bands that are useful) cost millions of dollars. Why would they spend more $$$ for a few days a year.

Most of your media and news people are wire (or fibre) out of the stadium.

You will run into this problem anywhere a lot of people get together (more than say 5k), but why fix the issue then the problem only comes up 40 hours out of the year?

 

[psychotron]

I have season tickets to the Angels and Chargers and there is no way in hell you get anything other than calls and texts to work. Internet won't even load anything more than Google. However, if you know people as I do, you can get on the wifi set up for the press in the stadium and that works great

 

[falconey]

FWIW, I stream slingbox while at Falcons games. I don't even pay attention to bars, but when I do usually my 4G is at 2 bars...

 

[CarrieK]

This is what I'm getting on 4G at LP Field in Nashville, TN. Not too shabby

lol, apparently the only ones capable of getting any sort of a decent reception in LP Field besides Sprint customers is the Texas!

 

[ravenas]

I ran this test at M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore on Sunday as part of my 14-day Trial period. In the past I used VirginMobile and always lost 3G signal. Or rather I had signal at such throughput levels it was useless. My brother's Verizon phone fared as well. Texts didn't even go through on his. Too much competition for the same spectrum.

Well, flip on my 4G radio and I get full bars. My download speed was only around 2.6mbps but steady and decent enough for Slingplayer.

I only used it during the game to check scores and Fantasy football. Switched to Slingplayer immediately after for the post-game wrap up and to watch the Steelers game.

Let my nephew play with the phone all the way home. We lost 4G signal about 10 miles away from the stadium en route home. Then he switched to playing games. By the time I got in the door, the battery was down to 3%.

I have the Samsung Galaxy S II Epic Touch. It lasted from roughly 9am - 6pm with the 4G radio on, auto brightness, volume at max and JuiceDefender running in the background for when I shut the screen off.

I just happy to see I had internet during a game. That's something I've never had in all the years I've used 3G.