College football championship game vs. Swifties

Submitted by BlueMan80 on January 10th, 2024 at 2:03 PM

As someone who spent many years in the wireless telecom industry, I'm always analyzing what the hell is going on with my Verizon wireless service at football games.  My service at Michigan Stadium improved this past season and should continue to improve as new spectrum is deployed.  My service at the Rose Bowl was pathetic.  Why?  For the championship game at NRG, 20TBs of data moved through the AT&T network.  That's a lot of data.  At SOFI stadium last year for the CFP, 14TB of data flowed through the AT&T network.  The traffic at NRG for the game was eclipsed by Taylor Swift's concert at NRG.  It's all that Tik Tok traffic!  There's some other interesting data on network traffic in the article.

https://www.fiercewireless.com/wireless/att-traffic-college-football-vs-swifties-guess-who-wins

 

IYAOYAS

January 10th, 2024 at 2:21 PM ^

A rather odd post but interesting so no negs from me. 

Is there any prioritization scheme for network traffic? I imagine emergency traffic zips through but does plain text supersede imagery and video? My wife and I were actually discussing this prior to the OSU game. 

BlueMan80

January 10th, 2024 at 2:29 PM ^

To address emergency workers, a whole chunk of spectrum was set aside and used to build a national network devoted to emergency workers.  It's up and running.  You can prioritize traffic, but if the network is slammed with capacity demands, all the prioritization in the world won't save you.  It's just too much demand for the limited amount of spectrum available.

jmstranger

January 10th, 2024 at 2:30 PM ^

Not surprising - I have a friend who is a huge TS fan and she was watching fans streaming the show from all kinds of different venues. I'd say a large portion of fans live stream her shows while at them. Still a lot data to move though.

Jonesy

January 10th, 2024 at 2:37 PM ^

Yeah I don't understand those people. Those youtube phone videos of concerts are awful and you're going to spend the entire time watching that phone video in person. Morons, all of 'em, enjoy the moment and if you must, watch one of the other idiots' phone video on youtube later, its not more special because it came from your phone.

quigley.blue

January 10th, 2024 at 2:33 PM ^

The Stadium had wifi also. I am not really familiar with how all this works or even how the data is collected, but presumably these numbers do not represent people on wifi (which I believe was comcast) or on other networks?