It seems the carriers’ Super Bowl network investments were well worth the money.
Fans at Super Bowl 50 were as data hungry as ever, consuming more than 15 terabytes of data across three of the country’s top wireless networks, the carriers said Monday.
According to game day statistics provided by Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint, mobile users on their networks used a combined 15.9 TB of data at Levi’s Stadium on Sunday.
Each of the three carriers reported a massive increase in usage from last year’s Super Bowl, including a 150 percent increase on the Sprint network, a 205 percent increase on AT&T’s network and a whopping 268 percent increase on Verizon’s network.
All told, Verizon subscribers consumed the most data at 7 TB, followed by AT&T customers using more than 5.2 TB, T-Mobile customers using 2.1 TB of data and Sprint customers using 1.6 TB on game day.
Verizon said the 7 TB of data usage on Sunday came from an estimated 35,000 devices in the stadium. Data usage was up significantly from the 4.1 TB used last year in Phoenix and 1.9 TB used two years ago in New Jersey, the carrier said.
In terms of usage type, Verizon said video and web browsing topped the chart at nearly 20 percent each, followed by social media sharing at 17.67 percent, cloud access at 15.96 percent, music at just over two percent and messaging and email at just under one and a half percent each. Just over 20 percent of customer usage fell into the category of “other,” Verizon said. Facebook was the most used application at 12 percent total usage, the carrier said.
Verizon said traffic spikes on its network mainly occurred during the halftime show, when Carolina pulled within six points of Denver and when Denver recovered a fumble for a touchdown in the first quarter.
AT&T said traffic on its network during Super Bowl 50 was up a stunning 882 percent compared to a regular season NFL game in 2015. At kickoff alone, the carrier said it saw more than 201 GB of data cross its network. Mobile traffic from all Super Bowl-related event activities leading up to and including Sunday’s game totaled 28.4 TB, AT&T said.
AT&T said total data usage on its network during the Super Bowl amounted to the equivalent of taking nearly 15 million “selfie” photos.
Sprint said traffic on its network around Levi’s Stadium was 93 percent higher than traffic outside University of Phoenix Stadium last year, and noted the biggest spikes in traffic came just after the opening ceremony and after halftime.
T-Mobile said its customers blew through five times more data streaming, surfing, Facetiming, Facebooking and Instagramming than they did at the Big Game last year for a total of 2.1 TB. The Un-carrier said the vast majority of usage was for social media and video(about 30 percent each), as well as general web use (about nine percent) and music (around six percent).
This article has been updated to include T-Mobile’s usage statistics.
Filed Under: Infrastructure
