Verizon coverage in stadiums is a joke

Moved to the VZW forums.

This could also be due to the high amount of users on the network all in 1 area. I used to live near an amphitheater and got fine reception most of the time but when there was a concert my reception would die. It got better when I got the TB and had 4G for a while but then after more people got on 4G it also would bog down when there was a concert. Same thing happens when there is a NASCAR race in town.

Yeahha said:

Moved to the VZW forums.

This could also be due to the high amount of users on the network all in 1 area. I used to live near an amphitheater and got fine reception most of the time but when there was a concert my reception would die. It got better when I got the TB and had 4G for a while but then after more people got on 4G it also would bog down when there was a concert. Same thing happens when there is a NASCAR race in town.

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I would tend to agree with Yeahha. A wireless tower can only handle so much traffic at any given moment. Think of it like this, the water pipes that service your area of town can only handle so much water through the pipe at any given moment. Think of what would happen to your water pressure and amount of delivered water if everyone in your neighborhood decided to flush thier toilet, take a shower and water thier lawn at the same time. Probably something similar to 8% of the people in a 75,000 seat stadium sending texts, accessing email and/or making a phone call at the same time. It just overloads the tower.

It's difficult to see the financial benefit to building a wireless tower big enough to handle the excessive traffic that only happens maybe 15 to 20 days a year.

Please keep in my my figures and percentages are just guestimates on my part.

Good luck to all of us,

IIRC they have portable towers they can deploy for use in the event of a natural disaster, if they could make those available to stadium owners to use it would help with this, or at least it seems like it would, I am not sure exactly how they work

But I agree with you dirk it wouldn't make fiscal sense to build towers at sports venues for the small percentage of the time they would be used over the course of a year. My phone bill is high enough I would rather not pay more for network expansion I will not use

Yeahha said:

IIRC they have portable towers they can deploy for use in the event of a natural disaster, if they could make those available to stadium owners to use it would help with this, or at least it seems like it would, I am not sure exactly how they work

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They don't even need to do that. They could install a Distributed Antenna System (DAS).

However, the OP still had problems at the Consol Energy Center which already has a DAS that VZW uses.

Crown Castle International - Investors - Press Release

HOUSTON, Mar 22, 2011 (GlobeNewswire via COMTEX) --

Crown Castle International Corp. (NYSE:CCI) today announced that one of its subsidiaries has deployed a neutral host distributed antenna system ("DAS") to facilitate wireless communications services within CONSOL Energy Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the new home of the Pittsburgh Penguins. The system currently facilitates wireless coverage for AT&T Mobility and Verizon Wireless and has capacity for three additional operators. "The Pittsburgh Penguins are pleased that Crown Castle will assist carriers in providing enhanced mobile phone and data coverage at CONSOL Energy Center for our fans," said Travis Williams, Senior Vice President of the hockey team.

An indoor distributed antenna system is a network of antennas connected by fiber to a communications hub designed to facilitate wireless communications services. The CONSOL Energy Center DAS network provides wireless coverage for fans and staff throughout the entire arena. "Fans and concertgoers are keen to share their event experience with friends and family. For CONSOL Energy Center, the premier sports and entertainment destination in the Pittsburgh area, the installation of a distributed antenna system enhances the fans' experience. Fans can now fully utilize their mobile phones for texting, calling and sending pictures to friends and family at the event and across the country before, during and after the arena games and concerts," stated Pat Slowey, Crown Castle's Senior Vice President of Sales and Customer Relations.

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Sounds like they may need to add more capacity.

I've been fortunate. I've experienced slower than normal speeds at sporting events but it was never useless and I've never had a problem with calls or texts going through.

DAS systems are one of the more effective ways to provide reasonable connectivity to stadiums and commercial buildings. Challenge is that they tend to be horrifically expensive. In some cases the DAS system installer will negotiate an agreement with some of the local wireless carriers to offset some of the cost of installation.

One of the challenges with wireless signals in stadium environments is all that reinforced concrete. Wireless signals hardly stand a chance due to the attenuation caused by the building materials. It's unfortunate that the open roof on many stadiums doesn't help much since many cell towers top out at around 100 feet... and most newer stadiums are taller still.

It's a problem with all carriers. I have season tickets to USC and reception is spotty at best. However it's as bad or worse with other carriers.

I ran into this when I was at the Bengals game watching Steelers whoop them back in November. I then had a 3g phone and got no signal. I recently went to another Bengals game but with my new 4g phone and did receive signal. I did sit at different locations and both games were sold out. So I don't know what the deal was. I just figured 4g was a stronger signal.

I was think "I never have this problem at Caps games" but that might have something to do with the fact that it's called the Verizon Center. Wonder if they dampen signals for other carriers. Lol.

Sucks pretty bad at Angel Stadium in Anaheim too.

Browns stadium is bad....unless my Steelers are winning. Also for few years had same issue at Michigan Speedway......but lately past couple years no problem there at all. Figured they either put new tower by track or bring in portable ones on race weekends.

I hate to tell you this, but ANYTIME you are in a location where there are thousands of other people in a small area and especially if you are inside a building, your cellular data access is going to be terrible, regardless of your carrier. I deal with this everyday while working in a new, well-built, government building that has about 5,000 people on-site and has many people with employer-issued Verizon smartphones, in addition to people with their own personal devices. I'm frequently stuck at 1X data, though I've never had any voice access problems.

No problems in the Superdome during saints games for me. Also no problems during LSU games in Tiger stadium.

Martimus said:

DAS systems are one of the more effective ways to provide reasonable connectivity to stadiums and commercial buildings. Challenge is that they tend to be horrifically expensive. In some cases the DAS system installer will negotiate an agreement with some of the local wireless carriers to offset some of the cost of installation.

One of the challenges with wireless signals in stadium environments is all that reinforced concrete. Wireless signals hardly stand a chance due to the attenuation caused by the building materials. It's unfortunate that the open roof on many stadiums doesn't help much since many cell towers top out at around 100 feet... and most newer stadiums are taller still.

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Are you in the industry martimus (I am) ? I agree, stadiums get very expensive, very very fast. But for other single-sector venues DAS is getting much more reasonably priced.

Lucas Oil Stadium (superbowl!) currently houses one of the biggest DAS in the world (at least in terms of # of sectors).

also:

CHIP72 said:

I hate to tell you this, but ANYTIME you are in a location where there are thousands of other people in a small area and especially if you are inside a building, your cellular data access is going to be terrible, regardless of your carrier.

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OP, I'm a season ticket holder for the Penguins and every game I've been to I have had zero issues with calls or texts. Some times data because of the amount of people there with smart phones doing whatever.

Anyways like others have said... towers can only do so much with large crowds. I know that Verizon has made leaps and bounds in State College, PA for Penn State football games. You used to have zero chance of getting calls/texts but now it works great... and that is with 100k+ people in one place.

Went to a Michigan Nebraska game up in Ann Arbor near the end of last year. My phone didn't work the entire game. I could occasionally receive a text or call but zero data.. I don't think you should expect much more. Then again, there were 112,000 people in the stadium.

rcyphermd said:

VZ clearly knows there are going to be a LOT of people at the stadiums using their service. Why they do not plan on increased equipment makes no sense. Especially at stadiums where they have a "Verizon Gate!!!"

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It's all about cost to them, they may sponser the name of a place but they are paying for that, for them to have to provide more support there it would be money out of their pocket that could be better spent trying to provide better coverage for areas of the country their network is lacking in that would service more customers on average

Yeahha said:

It's all about cost to them, they may sponser the name of a place but they are paying for that, for them to have to provide more support there it would be money out of their pocket that could be better spent trying to provide better coverage for areas of the country their network is lacking in that would service more customers on average

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They got the customers they have by being reliable. Other carriers are quickly improving and what is being expected of a mobile carrier is changing. If Verizon can't fill that need, someone will. They have been courting app developers to integrate network speed boosting technology that would work on a transactional basis. As a fan of the free market, I wouldn't mind people paying what they thought that privilege was worth to get priority network service but I have an issue with the fact that Verizon's service is already the most expensive while not always being the best nor the fastest. It is hard for me to feel sympathy when such an organization complains about cost.

That's the cost of doing business. I used to go to this game store. One exceptionally hot summer day, there was a donation basket near the cash register and a note above it. The note basically asked for customers to contribute because the cost of cooling the store "for our comfort" was very expensive. I told them it was the cost of doing business. "If you don't want to pay to cool the store, don't. You might not sell any games today. You could close the store until the heat wave passes if you won't take in enough to offset the cost. If you took in enough money in sales to more than pay the electric bill, what are you going to do for those customers who donated?"

Verizon raises prices at will and coverage has not improved for those who already have it. We've even had more outages and poorly integrated hardware that doesn't properly connect than ever (nevermind that much of that is due to the expanding market but the bottom line is that service has gotten more expensive but not better and in some cases worse.) It is their right to move on when they are not getting an acceptable return on investment but it is also the consumer's right to explore other options when that consumer does not see the value for their money.

But their network is expanding and being improved. 4G has expanded in my area for example, I can get 4G in many more places today than I could last April when I got the TB. What is more beneficial to the consumer expanding a small area where it will help a small percentage of the subscribers for at most 1/10 of a year (building up coverage around a stadium) or expanding the network into areas where there was previously little or no coverage to allow customers to greater areas of coverage?

If you are not happy with the service VZW provides and think the grass is greener with AT&T or Sprint come your next renewal jump ship but I suspect the same issues with over congested networks at times of concerts and sporting events affect them as well.

I find it funny that people spoke out against CarrierIQ then complain about coverage when the reason CIQ was on the phone was to report when coverage is spotty to the carrier so they can judge where it is best to build towers...but that is for a different thread

Expanding and being improved is a dubious statement at the moment. So the folks who already have it may or may not get a couple more square meters of coverage (if they don't get randomly dropped by an outage or bottom of the barrel hardware that came in at a top shelf price.)
None of these companies care anything about providing better or more service and those who make excuses for them just encourage them to carry on as they are. I don't care about stadium coverage or the cries of these companies about cost. Carriers may not be the answer. There was an interesting experiment conducted at SXSW and it might behoove these companies to take their head out of the... sand.

Sure the grass may not be greener but I might be paying someone a little less to be annoyed just as much!

And to imply that CIQ was on phones for the altruistic reason of enhancing the customer's experience is naive at best. There are apps to download and studies for people to participate in if they want.

I've often had to turn off data on my phone at Phillies games since my battery is quickly drained while it, presumably, it is fighting to keep a connection. Trying to use the phone's data connection is obviously impossible when this is happening.