The Super Bowl this year once again allowed cellular carriers to see record data usage by fans at the game, with Verizon reporting that it saw its customers use 52.34 terabytes of data “in and around” Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas on Sunday, besting the mark of 47.8 TB used at last year’s big game. But for Super Bowl LVIII, it appears that Verizon may have been pushing its customers to use 5G cellular services instead of Wi-Fi via some messaging on cellular phone communications settings, screenshots of which were sent to Stadium Tech Report by a Verizon customer who attended the game in person.
According to the screen shots, Verizon customers may have been using 5G data services even when they thought they were connecting to Wi-Fi. One message we saw had a Wi-Fi SSID named “VerizonWiFiAccess” that below it had a statement that read, “Using 5G Cellular For Internet.” Another screen shot sent to us by the same Verizon customer showed a pop-up message from a Wi-Fi settings screen that asked, “Use ‘VerizonWiFiAccess’ Wi-Fi instead of 5G cellular? This Wi-Fi network may be unsecured, or faster internet may be available on 5G cellular.”
Though the pop-up still allowed customers to choose between using Wi-Fi and cellular, the language of the message seemed to suggest that 5G cellular may be a faster and more secure connection, without explicitly saying so. Stadium Tech Report reached out to Verizon for comment late on Tuesday, but has not yet received a reply. We will update this post when we get a reply.
Did 5G investments push priority for cellular over Wi-Fi?
At many stadiums, especially large venues holding big events, the fan-facing Wi-Fi networks are usually responsible for carrying the bulk of fan traffic. Cellular carriers, including Verizon, often negotiate deals for a separate Wi-Fi SSID that they can automatically switch their customers to.
Allegiant Stadium’s free fan-facing Wi-Fi network, designed to be one of the best ever, was well prepared for the Super Bowl, with some recent upgrades that included more Cisco 9104 “Marlin” antennas with a longer reach for better coverage. In its “know before you go” messaging to fans, the NFL said that free Wi-Fi would be available at the game.
However, a substantially larger investment by Verizon in 5G infrastructure at Allegiant Stadium ahead of Super Bowl LVIII may have led the carrier to try to prioritize fan traffic for its customers onto its 5G infrastructure instead of passing it off to Wi-Fi. According to an earlier press release, Verizon said it had installed 250 5G millimeter wave antennas at Allegiant Stadium ahead of the Super Bowl. Verizon was also the primary user of an upgrade to the stadium’s distributed antenna system (DAS) that added new MatSing lens antennas to support 5G connectivity in the C-band spectrum.
However it got there, Verizon did report some amazing usage stats for its 5G networks in and around the stadium, a definition usually meant to include not just the stadium itself but the surrounding territory around the venue, like parking lots and walkways. According to Verizon, it saw a peak download speed of 4.4 Gbps, and a peak upload speed of 671 Mbps, with a median download speed of 2.7 Gbps and a median upload speed of 138 Mbps. Verizon said that approximately 31,123 of the 61,629 attendees used Verizon’s network, with 70 percent of those customers using 5G services.
We have not yet received any information from AT&T or from T-Mobile about how much data their customers used at the Super Bowl this year. We have also not yet received any information about how much data was used by fans on the stadium’s Wi-FI network. Stay tuned to Stadium Tech Report for more news as we receive more data from the carriers and the venue.
