Clarence Reynolds, TelecomTV (00:02):
Sports venues are becoming digital hubs where tens of thousands of fans demand seamless connectivity for everything from mobile ticketing to real-time replays. So the wireless infrastructure requirements have evolved dramatically. Dobias van Ingen, MIA CTO, and Vice President Systems Engineering at HPE Aruba Networking joins us to explore how modern stadiums are meeting these connectivity challenges. DOAs, thanks for being with us. You're welcome. Thank you for inviting me. I see you dressed for the occasion as well.

Dobias van Ingen, HPE (00:33):
It's a nice shirt, right?

Clarence Reynolds, TelecomTV (00:34):
We're talking about sports. Yes. Very nice. What is HPE doing for Barcelona fc?

Dobias van Ingen, HPE (00:40):
It's an interesting question. Look at this. They are rebuilding actually the old stadium to a new one. So it's a size of 26 soccer fields, but it's in the middle of the city. So it's not that you can demolish a stadium and then build a complete new one. So the more has building parts of the stadium new into a new stadium and what we do there, and it's not only a stadium, it's also hotels. It's a 105,000 roughly seats people stadium, plus a smaller 15,000 stadium for different sports. Then there is hotel restaurants and new headquarters and museum. So there's many things people can do at that stadium. What we do is building the best wire connectivity, security best wireless connectivity, and of course we also provide from an HP perspective, private cloud enterprise to manage the workloads that Lego, I like managing the clouds.

(01:34):
What are the challenges that stadiums face when it comes to wireless connectivity? I think if I need to summarize it, it roughly is two things, right? One is fan engagement, so how can you optimize the fan engagement, get inea ordering, look at waiting times, how people are flowing to the stadium and maybe even facial recognition to get in. And I think technology is seen as the go-to market for that one or the enabler. Even. The other one is operational efficiency. So the stadium is not only used for a soccer or football match, depending on the country where you are, but also for concerts or you want maybe do events. So the digital signage, video analytics, maybe even videos are valent. So it's also operational efficiency that you want to use it for and that's why I think the challenges they opt to make sure we can find solutions for that one.

(02:24):
How is HPE approaching wireless differently? So we are different, actually it started a long time ago in the first stadium in the us. The challenge with a bowl is actually that you need to get the wifi out and if you want to need to get the wifi out because otherwise all the clients see all the aps. So what we do is, let's take this one for an example. We have this five 18 and we put small antennas on here in a specific cage so it can handle temperature and everything, but we put it on the seat. So you're going to sit on top of your AP and that damps the signal. So then you create small cells actually in the stadium to optimize wifi. The other thing we do different, if we, for example, look at this ap, this AP is not only supporting 2.45 and six gigahertz, but also BLE and ZigBee.

(03:14):
So we can do IOT sensors, we can do anything, actually connect everything inside the stadium to optimize the fan and operational experience. What are the results your customers have seen so far? Increased revenue per actually per visitor. And that's one thing, but also I think attract younger people to the stadium. That's a challenge. They want to be online, watch it, replay, share on social media, branding for these inea ordering, inea, maybe Jersey ordering. So I think it's many things and it's also managing full life cycle of the fans and not just when they're in the stadium, when they are at home with an app coming to the parking into the stadium and going outside. So it's managing that lifecycle and engagement with the fence.

Clarence Reynolds, TelecomTV (04:01):
Excellent. Dobias, thank you so much for being with us today.

Dobias van Ingen, HPE (04:04):
You're welcome. Thank you very

Clarence Reynolds, TelecomTV (04:05):
Much. And we have to see the back of your jersey. Want to show it if you don't mind, please.

Dobias van Ingen, HPE (04:09):
It'll be a shocking thing, please,

Clarence Reynolds, TelecomTV (04:10):
But I'll

Dobias van Ingen, HPE (04:10):
Show it to you. Please

Clarence Reynolds, TelecomTV (04:11):
Look at this one.

Dobias van Ingen, HPE (04:13):
HPE networking number one, right?

Clarence Reynolds, TelecomTV (04:15):
Absolutely. That's it. Dobias, thank you for sharing your insights. Thank you very much.

Dobias van Ingen, HPE (04:20):
You're welcome.