Cox gears up for Super Bowl LVIII

The spotlight will be shining on the Kansas City Chiefs and the San Francisco 49ers for Super Bowl LVIII, set to kick off this Sunday at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas. But this year's Big Game will also serve as a close-up of sorts for Cox Business.

Cox Business, which notched its deal to provide optical and Wi-Fi connectivity to the new home of the Las Vegas Raiders in 2020, has been preparing for this weekend's game for the past year, according to Steve Westerman, the exec who runs Cox Business' B2B sales team in Las Vegas.

He said Cox Business, which provides a NOC-as-a-service for the stadium, will have a bridge connecting a team inside the building with the company's network operations center in Atlanta during the game.

"We've even put into place network and physical security around the entire stadium and around our network for the game," Westerman said. "The Big Game is a big deal. For a year, we've been planning for this."

That will build on the infrastructure that Cox Business has already put in place.

That includes multiple hundred-gigabit rings circling the stadium – inside and out – geo-redundant data centers, and the use of diverse routes to ensure there's very little room for failure.

Cox has also laid more than 227 miles of in-stadium fiber optic cable, enabled 1,700 hotspots at the venue and is powering 2,200 in-stadium screens and 75,000 feet of digital displays via a private IP network.

Anticipating a new Wi-Fi high

Westerman expects Wi-Fi usage in and around the stadium to break a record during Super Bowl LVIII, anticipating that many of the 65,000-plus who will be in attendance (or hanging around the venue) will be tapping into the Wi-Fi network to upload gobs of videos and photos.

According to Cox, a busy game at Allegiant generates about 7 terabytes of Wi-Fi traffic.

But Cox's Wi-Fi strategy for the game will go beyond the stadium itself. The operator is also providing free access to its Wi-Fi hotspot network in Las Vegas (via the "FreeCoxWiFi" SSID) through February 12.

This weekend's game at Allegiant will represent the second of a string of three Super Bowl venues in which Cox will be providing core connectivity. Cox also supported last year's Super Bowl LVII at State Farm stadium in Glendale, Arizona, and will be on tap to do the same next year for Super Bowl LIX at the Caesars Superdome in New Orleans.

Cox will be sharing the spotlight with other telecom and wireless providers. Verizon, for instance, will be pitching in with its 5G network. For Super Bowl LVIII, Verizon plans to deploy nearly 250 mmWave radios to provide 5G coverage to seating areas, back of the house, suites, lounges, press box, concourse areas and entryways into the stadium.

Light Reading will be sharing a more comprehensive view of the networks supporting Super Bowl LVIII later today.

Update: You can read that roundup here.