Mobile Phone Infrastructure Tested During World Cup: Daily

By Lise Alves, Contributing Reporter

SÃO PAULO, BRAZIL – During the opening ceremony and first game of the World Cup in São Paulo June 12th, more than 135,000 calls were made and more than one million pieces of data sent by mobile phones from spectators at the stadium.

According to SindiTelebrasil (National Union of Telephone and Mobile Service Union), Brazil’s main telephone operators, Claro, Oi, Nextel, Tim and Vivo joined together to share the communication infrastructure in the twelve stadiums hosting the games. The total investment for all stadiums was of over R$226 million.

In all 4,738 antennas have been installed inside the stadiums. In addition, the entity said that the companies also invested close to R$1.3 billion to expand, by an average of 28 percent, coverage in the host cities.

“The infrastructure for coverage set up by telephone operators in the São Paulo Arena allowed for the intensive use of telephone services and mobile connection to the internet through 2G, 3G and 4G networks,” said SindiTelebrasil.

The entity stated that the service presented a satisfactory performance, even during the peak periods between 1PM and 3PM, when the opening ceremony started, with most users relying on 3G technology. The São Paulo Arena counted on 337 antennas inside the stadium interlinked by 12 km of optic fibers, while the external area had twenty-two mobile antennas.

The São Paulo Arena, however, is one of six stadiums which do not provide Wi-Fi infrastructure to visitors, due to a lack of agreement between telephone operators and the stadiums’ administrators.

Read more (in Portuguese).

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