Bad reception:
Sports Authority Field at Mile High ranks among the NFL’s worst for wireless performance.
The Denver Broncos are the AFC’s No. 1 seed, but its stadium is pretty awful for mobile reception.
According to RootMetrics, Sports Authority Field at Mile High ranked in the bottom third of the NFL’s 31 stadiums in wireless data performance — and it’s the worst among the four teams playing Sunday.
It’s also the worst among the eight teams that played last weekend.
“Stadiums vary widely when it comes to network performance,” RootMetrics vice president Julie Dey said of the report released Thursday. “When it comes to Sports Authority Field at Mile High, a number of factors could be at play, such as the age of the stadium, material of the building itself, congestion in and around the stadium — even geography can affect how mobile networks perform in a stadium.”
RootMetrics, owned by Englewood’s IHS Inc., tested each stadium for one game during the regular season. For the Broncos, it was Nov. 15 against the Kansas City Chiefs.
Testers for the company used off-the-shelf smartphones. They tested for Internet speeds and performance (checking e-mail and using apps) as they sat, walked in the concourse and public areas, and stood in line for food.
Top stadium
The top-scoring stadium was Levi’s Stadium, in Santa Clara, Calif., home of the San Francisco 49ers and where the Super Bowl will be played Feb. 7. Levi’s, which is the NFL’s newest venue, “was designed in part to do a better job of handling heavy network traffic,” according to the RootMetrics report.
Levi’s Stadium scored 88.6 points for overall data performance. Mile High ranked No. 22, scoring 63.9. The worst? Ford Field in Detroit, at 30.4.
In Denver, Verizon led in overall data performance, scoring an 85.5. This means Verizon users connected and stayed connected. While the score is not based on a 100-point scale, Dey said a score in the 90s “is indicative of good overall performance.”
Other wireless services had a rough time. AT&T scored 57.1, while T-Mobile and Sprint earned 45.9 and 42.0, respectively.
When it came to Internet speeds, Verizon trounced the others with a medium download speed of 4.6 megabits per second. Sprint scored the second-fastest, at 0.8 mbps. AT&T hit 0.7 mbps, and T-Mobile ranked lowest, at 0.3 mbps.
Because RootMetrics doesn’t know company strategies, it’s difficult to explain carriers’ performance, Dey said.
“Similar to the rankings of the stadiums, carrier performance can depend on a variety of factors. This can include specific congestion on a carrier’s network, distance to a specific carrier’s tower, specific carrier provisioning within the stadium, and the like,” she said.
As more fans use their smart- phones to check, ahem, nongamerelated things, data use has become a big issue for mobile providers.
Russ Trainor, vice president of information technology for the Broncos, said three of the four carriers have installed antennas stadiumwide. T-Mobile is still working on its installation.
The stadium also offers Wi-Fi service, but only Verizon has joined the network. Wi-Fi supplements a carrier’s ability to move more photos, e-mail and other data on its network.
Verizon said it has spent years improving its service at Mile High and tailgating areas with antennas and Wi-Fi. Last year, the company increased its data capacity at the stadium by 50 percent, said Jenny Weaver, a Verizon spokesperson.
“We continue this investment because we know Broncos fans want to share every exciting moment from the game,” she said.
Antennas at hand
AT&T invested heavily at Mile High in 2013, adding equipment that was equivalent to 11 cell sites. The company put 325 antennas throughout the stadium in unobtrusive places, including handrails.
Suzanne Trantow, an AT&T spokesperson, said the company increased its network capacity by 66 percent in 2015. But AT&T isn’t part of the stadium Wi-Fi network, which might have impacted RootMetrics’ results.
Trantow said local customers are using a lot more data during football games than a year ago.
Average data use this season was up 64 percent on game days. Last weekend, customers on AT&T’s antennas at Mile High used 610 gigabytes — enough data to take 1.8 million selfies, Trantow said.
Outside Mile High, all four mobile rivals scored above 90 points for overall performance during tests conducted in August. Verizon and Sprint led the way with 94.7 and 94.5, respectively.