Fans take selfies during the Broncos game against the New England Patriots at Sports Authority Field at Mile High in Denver, CO on November 29, 2015. (Photo by AAron Ontiveroz/The Denver Post)
It was a big day for wireless data at Sunday’s Broncos game, and not just because network issues of their Microsoft Surface tablets.
Verizon Wireless said its customers inside the Sports Authority Field at Mile High used nearly 3 terabytes of data on Sunday.
Of that, 1.17 terabytes was on company’s LTE mobile network, while another 1.7 TB was offloaded to the stadium’s Wi-Fi network.
Verizon is the only company of the four major carriers to use the stadium’s Wi-Fi network. That may be a big reason why the company was rated the of NFL stadiums by RootMetrics, a company that tests mobile service quality nationwide. Mile High stadium ranked in the bottom third of the NFL’s 31 stadiums.
Verizon doesn’t have the same Wi-Fi deal with the Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte, N.C., where the Carolina Panthers won their semifinals game on Sunday. Still, attendees at that game used about 1.3 TB of wireless LTE data from Verizon.
Perhaps Denver’s heavier use of data came from people checking out the . Or maybe Broncos fans took more selfies?
AT&T reports similar high-data usage at Mile High on Sunday. AT&T mobile customers used 819 gigabytes of data on the company’s network “the most ever on our network at the stadium,” confirmed AT&T spokeswoman Suzanne Trantow.
Trantow broke it down for us: 819 GB translates to 2.3 million selfies.
By comparison, AT&T customer data use on Sunday was 34 percent more than Denver’s first home-playoff game against Pittsburgh and 52 percent more than the average game during the 2015 season.
Go data!
