Vodafone Portugal has announced that it has completed an ambitious plan to increase the coverage and capacity of its mobile communications network at the Estádio do Dragão. Twenty next-generation antennas have been used, distributed at strategic points of the stadium and synchronised using Elastic Ran technology. This new system increases the capacity of the mobile and data network tenfold, enabling it to support up to 80,000 users.
The Estádio do Dragão, the home of Futebol Clube do Porto, is one of the biggest in Portugal. At an FC Porto game in the national league championship, an average of 100,000 minutes of voice traffic and 600 GB of data traffic are generated, with a high number of simultaneous users. For example, at FC Porto’s presentation match recently, data traffic reached 1.3TB, an increase of 64% compared to last season’s presentation match. In these situations, the spectral efficiency of the network is increased thanks to MIMO technology which, using different beams on special antennas, makes it possible to transmit more data in a much more targeted way.
In addition to these technologies, the project also uses three LTE bands (with capacity to receive three more, including LTE TDD), which increase the bandwidth, providing users with peak speeds six times higher than those previously seen. This investment means that the network is prepared for the aggregate speed of all simultaneous users to reach 5Gbps, supported on 4.5G LTE technology.
Vodafone has put in place dedicated plans to increase the coverage and capacity of its mobile communications network whenever large crowds of people are expected at major events. This increase was made, for example, at the Estádio da Luz, in the Web Summit area, at Fátima during the visit of Pope Francis and more recently, at the venues that hosted the Eurovision Song Contest events.
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