Joy Yoder has been working more than 60 hours a week this month, thanks to the Colorado Rockies’ magical ride to the World Series.
But she doesn’t seem to mind.
“This is the good stuff. I love baseball,” said the Qwest customer-data technician who has headed the company’s account at Coors Field for 11 years. “On game day, I need to be here six to seven hours early. Being able to watch the game means that all has gone well.”
Since the Rockies have been thrust into the national and international spotlight, Qwest technicians have been working feverishly to upgrade data capacity before Saturday’s first home game of the Series. The company is adding dozens more telephone lines and high-speed DSL lines and beefing up its cellphone towers in and around Coors Field to handle the onslaught of media and fans focused on the World Series.
“I’d say we have over 200 (DSL) lines in now,” Yoder said. “We’ll probably have 300 by Saturday.”
Typically, Qwest operates 675 land-line telephones within Coors Field. That number is expected to increase to more than 1,000 by Saturday.
Qwest has provided fiber-optic lines for phone, Internet and video service at Coors since it opened in 1995. Lately, the company has been receiving requests nearly every hour for additional bandwith at the ballpark, though it would not specify who was seeking it.
12 extra sets of hands
Yoder is usually the only Qwest employee on site at Coors Field. This week, at least 12 additional workers were brought in to complete tasks such as testing telephone lines and running cables to makeshift offices set up in trailers outside the stadium.
Most of the communications infrastructure needed to handle the World Series was added in 1998, when Major League Baseball’s All-Star Game was held at Coors Field, said Bill Stephani, director of information systems for the Rockies. Now workers are primarily connecting to that infrastructure and boosting it in certain places.
The need for additional Internet bandwidth and phone lines comes primarily from news outlets sending out up-to-the- minute game updates.
Uploading or sending high-resolution digital photos generally requires an uninterrupted high-speed connection. The Associated Press’ three editors and five photographers at the games will be sending photos from Coors Field to editors in New York, who will then send them to media outlets worldwide.
“There’s so much competition (with other news outlets),” said Ed Andreski, staff photographer for AP in Denver. “The quicker you can get pictures back, (the better). Editors waiting for the pictures from the game don’t necessarily wait for the best, but go with the first picture.”
Qwest is not the only company working overtime. Cellphone carriers are testing their networks or boosting cell-tower power to avoid dropped calls.
Verizon Wireless said it experienced “up to 12 times the usual volume” on its downtown-area network during the National League Championship Series games in Denver.
The company said in a written statement that it has “augmented capacity to existing sites that serve Coors Field and the surrounding area” and “enhanced in-building coverage at several hotels in the downtown area.”
Qwest resells Sprint wireless service and has also added cellphone bandwidth in and around the area.
These mobile-phone networks have become increasingly essential as more people use their phones to send text messages, e-mail, photos and videos.
In addition, air cards inserted into laptops to enable Internet access also rely on cellphone networks.
“We’ve added radio capacity on our cell towers, so it can handle the increase in both voice and data traffic,” said Vanessa Smith, spokeswoman for AT&T’s wireless division. “We added it prior to the NLCS, and we’re now testing the network in the area.”
Kimberly S. Johnson: 303-954-1088
BY THE NUMBERS
1,000: Miles of fiber-optic cable within Coors Field operated by Qwest – roughly the distance from Coors Field to Chicago’s Wrigley Field
675: Telephone land lines at Coors Field during the regular season
1,000: Telephone land lines at Coors Field for Saturday’s Game 3 of the World Series
230: Coors Field-area cellphone calls made across Qwest’s wireless network between noon and 1 p.m. on an average weekday
6,137: Coors Field-area cellphone calls at 6 p.m. Oct. 1, the day of the Rockies’ tiebreaker game against the San Diego Padres
Source: Qwest Communications
