AT&T at Memorial Stadium

[Lott's Bandana]

A friend of mine who operates part of the scoreboard system for SoonerVision told me that AT&T recently installed relay antennas in several places around the top of the stadium.

The Iowa State game was to be the implementation of the new system to help with reception/transmission.



My iPhone didn't work for **** during the game last week, which is par for the course.


:pop:

[Boomer.....]

Yeah the reception on an iPhone is horrible before, during, and after the games.

I've heard that if you turn off the 3G network, you will get better reception. I haven't got a chance to try it out yet.

[Lott's Bandana]

Yeah the reception on an iPhone is horrible before, during, and after the games.

I've heard that if you turn off the 3G network, you will get better reception. I haven't got a chance to try it out yet.


I have. Done it before the game and tried it during a game...sometimes texts go out, sometimes no...

Usually I get a dozen texts in as I'm walking down Jenkins on my way back to the TG, all queue'd up from being sent while the game was going on.

[oudavid1]

A friend of mine who operates part of the scoreboard system for SoonerVision

i dont mean to nerd this shizz up, but i would want that job. Lucky.

[Lott's Bandana]

i dont mean to nerd this shizz up, but i would want that job. Lucky.


Yeah, he runs the board at the LNC as well.

[madillsoonerfan5353]

My iPhone worked pretty good Saturday? But th AFA game not so much.

:gary:

[Lott's Bandana]

My iPhone worked pretty good Saturday? But th AFA game not so much.

:gary:


That's encouraging, 'cept mine was temporarily bricked.


However, I did go in there with less than 10% battery and it ran out quick trying to get a signal. I have noticed a data performance decline when the battery is low, so maybe next time it will work better.

[oudavid1]

Yeah, he runs the board at the LNC as well.

is he a student? Does just one person do what he is assigned? that would be a really cool job

[Lott's Bandana]

No...a grad that owns an Audio/Video biz here in Norman.

He runs the incoming scores from national games and supervises students running the other systems.

I beef at him all the time for the poor way we get current game updates in the stadium, the Wis/tOSU game being a perfect example.
He is hampered by the fact that the score system is automated and feeds directly into their display computer, so he can't custom add games.
He agrees it needs to get better.

He also said he was watching the Wis/tOSU game in the press box at the same time his system was leaving us in the dark. :mad:

[Soonermagik]

My iphone was hit or miss at the Iowa State game. I could get reception sometimes, but not at other times.

As soon as I get far away enough from the stadium I get like 50 delayed texts all at once. I hope they keep working on the problem. It sucks not being able to text or call at games.

[yermom]

my iPhone was working fine. i'm on T-Mobile though :D

data was spotty though. it's a shame WiFi doesn't work all over the stadium

[OU_Sooners75]

It worked for my phone just fine. But mine isn't 3 or 4 g either.

[stoops the eternal pimp]

I'm with you lott..I turned 3g off and on, did about everything....every once in a while one would get through

[Lawton4Life]

I'm on sprint with the EVO and this is the best i have ever been able to send/receive texts during the game. My old samsung got nothing in or out for the most part.

[Soonermagik]

I'm with you lott..I turned 3g off and on, did about everything....every once in a while one would get through

^^^ Love the avatar and location lol. :D

[Mark_in_Tulsa]

I'm on sprint with the EVO and this is the best i have ever been able to send/receive texts during the game. My old samsung got nothing in or out for the most part.

Evo for the win.

[HBick]

Obviously, with the amount of money people spend to attend OU games, you would think they would provide free Wi-Fi, I can get on OU Wi-Fi because I'm a student, but it's spotty on the East Side of the stadium.

In the not so distant future, look for major universities to start looking into agreements with third party wireless internet service providers to offer you Wi-Fi, but at a price.

But to address the initial topic, I had absolutely no service during the entire game, but maybe that's because I was holding the dead spot on the iPhone, I wasn't really in a frame of mind to pay attention to that.

[JRAM]

Why in the hell would anyone want to be using a phone during a football game? Seems to me that one would want to focus on the game and not do little kid things like play with your phone. Mercy!

[GottaHavePride]

Why in the hell would anyone want to be using a phone during a football game? Seems to me that one would want to focus on the game and not do little kid things like play with your phone. Mercy!


What if you have relatives who are unavoidably tied up somewhere they can't see the game and who threaten to kill you if you don't text them every time the score changes?

There's reasons for using a phone at the game.


And FYI, I've had Sprint for about 15 years and I've NEVER had a problem with reception at a game. AT&T's coverage in Norman just sucks.

[Tigeman]

Here's a thought........

Perhaps it's the fact that all of you are trying to use your damn Iphone's (ok ok any phone really) at the same time clogging the AT&T system! IDK, I'm no genious or anything :D!

[bluedogok]

Maybe if they actually provided the level of capacity they should for any place with 40-100K people at AT&T wouldn't get bashed so much about their poor service. AT&T sucks at every stadium that I have tried to use my phone at, even before I had an iPhone. It is pretty much worthless at JerryWorld, Mile High, Fenway Park, etc. I know during big events here AT&T has to bring in a bunch of temporary capacity sites to handle the volume. They can pay for 20,000 lf feet of sign board stating they are the Official provider of JerryWorld but can't provide decent phone or data service. I have a 3G, been waiting to see if they really do offer it on Verizon, then I might have a reason to upgrade and I have been with them since they were Southwestern Bell Mobile Systems.

[GottaHavePride]

Yeah, so my girlfriend has one of the older generation of iPhones (the ones that worked...) and her phone had been dropping calls like crazy since August. She called and complained and the people said "yeah, we've been having a lot of complaints in your area recently..."

She said "you mean no one at AT&T thought hey, you're about to have 24,000 students arrive in town with brand new latest-generation iPhones and clog up your networks with data usage?" According to her, the reaction to that question was "Uh....."

[85sooners]



[SoonerSpender]

I don't usually post on this site, but i know a little about this, so.......
What you guys are talking about is a DAS, distributed antenna system, and athletics is in the process of installing one at OMS. The DAS provider is a vendor agnostic solution which means AT&T, Sprint, any cell provider will be able to use it, for a fee of course. It won't be fully functional until after the football season, and like you guys have pointed out AT&T is desperate to get this done. For what its worth a DAS is also capable of sending a WiFi signal.

[Lott's Bandana]

I don't usually post on this site, but i know a little about this, so.......
What you guys are talking about is a DAS, distributed antenna system, and athletics is in the process of installing one at OMS. The DAS provider is a vendor agnostic solution which means AT&T, Sprint, any cell provider will be able to use it, for a fee of course. It won't be fully functional until after the football season, and like you guys have pointed out AT&T is desperate to get this done. For what its worth a DAS is also capable of sending a WiFi signal.


Clarification spek!

[sooner518]

Why in the hell would anyone want to be using a phone during a football game? Seems to me that one would want to focus on the game and not do little kid things like play with your phone. Mercy!

becuase out of the 60 minutes of literal gametime, and 4 + hours of actually being in the stadium, there is on average, 11 minutes of actual football action in one game. It is nice to be able to keep up on the scores of other games while sitting through the 8,000 commercials that a nationally televised game has.

[Sooner_Tuf]

Adding capacity is more complicated than just going out and doing it. I know that it can take as much as three years (maybe more) to get all the approvals necessary to fire up a new tower.

[Lott's Bandana]

becuase out of the 60 minutes of literal gametime, and 4 + hours of actually being in the stadium, there is on average, 11 minutes of actual football action in one game. It is nice to be able to keep up on the scores of other games while sitting through the 8,000 commercials that a nationally televised game has.


As well as the ridiculous irony that is the genius marketing ploy of having 85,000 fans all texting in their song choice, or photos of their gameday experience all at the same time, egged on by the giant HD Videoboard.

wireless FAIL

[Oldnslo]

after years of frustration with ATT, I have learned that I simply must turn off my iphone for the duration of the game. I am, to be certain, less than fully pleased with my solution.

[bluedogok]

Adding capacity is more complicated than just going out and doing it. I know that it can take as much as three years (maybe more) to get all the approvals necessary to fire up a new tower.
They can expand the bandwidth at the tower itself, that is pretty easy with the modular switching now but that is as long as they have enough backhaul link capacity. When I was doing cell sites that link from the cell to the switch always seemed to be the issue. I spent two weeks in Cleveland surveying cell sites for a microwave relay system for the backhaul as a way to increase capacity.