The Indianapolis 500, which is once again attracting sellout crowds, is proving to be a huge wireless-data usage day as well, with Verizon seeing 40.8 TB of data used on its networks in and around the speedway for last Sunday’s race.
While actual attendance is always hard to figure out — especially since Sunday’s 108th running of the event was delayed for several hours by rain — it’s a good guess that the number of fans in attendance was somewhat close to the capacity figure of around 345,000.
To ensure those fans could connect wirelessly while at the race, Verizon once again updated its network beforehand, almost doubling the number of C-band spectrum nodes, according to company representatives.
According to Verizon part of its new C-band install includes some smaller lens antennas from MatSing, which Verizon had in part mounted on poles in each of the massive racetrack’s four turns.
Indianapolis Speedway not only has about 230,000 grandstand seats but like an outdoor concert, it also has fans gathered on the grass in the expansive infield. As you can see from the photos, Verizon had many network elements in every place possible, both in the grandstands and out in the infield, to cover the massive crowd.
According to Verizon there was 36.2 TB of data used by its customers at last year’s race. At the 2022 Indy 500, Verizon reported 17 TB of data usage on its networks.
