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Ruckus Smart Wi-Fi is a Clean Winner at Annual BNP Paribas Open Tennis Tournament in Indian Wells

Indian Wells Tennis Garden Provides “Flawless” Wireless Coverage, Including Live Streaming Video on New BNP Paribas Open Mobile App to As Many As 9,000 Concurrent Users Daily Over Two-Week Tournament

BNP Paribas Open Goes High-Tech With New Mobile App, Wi-Fi System, Charging Stations

Indian Wells Tennis Garden is expecting about 420,000 for this year's event

A new mobile app is "one of various technological improvements" at this year's BNP Paribas Open, along with "public Wi-Fi, charging stations and an expanded hawk-eye system for all matches," according to Xochitl Pena of the Palm Springs DESERT SUN. The tournament is "expected to attract about 420,000 people" to the Indian Wells Tennis Garden this year. The app, with "more than 42,000 downloads" thus far, "also made it necessary to have a public Wi-Fi system that could handle its usage." Palm Desert-based West Coast Networking "installed" the system. The stadium "now has the capacity to accommodate 25,000 concurrent users, but so far is averaging between 6,000 and 9,000 Wi-Fi log ins daily." Tournament Dir Steve Simon "reports no complaints over the new system so far," and said that the staff has "only experienced one glitch when their 'UPS power supply' went out once, but only for about 5 to 10 minutes." Each of the new charging stations "has 24 nooks for people to hook in" their devices. The tournament also "brought a vendor on site -- PlusBlue Solutions -- to provide battery packs for purchase and rent." Specators can rent the battery packs for "$10 to $15 a day" or purchase them "for anywhere from $50 to $100." PlusBlue Founder & Managing Partner Mike Bagby on Monday said that they "had about 2,000 transactions which includes rentals and purchases" (Palm Springs DESERT SUN, 3/14).

Ruckus Wireless handles the Wi-Fi load at the BNP Paribas Open

The Indian Wells Tennis Garden broke records in 2014 with more than 430,000 tennis fans passing through the gates to watch the best tennis players in the world.

Thanks to Ruckus Wireless, Inc.

Rukus Wireless made sure fans located throughout the Tennis Garden, and on the massive 16,000 seat Stadium 1, as well as the brand new 8,000 seat Stadium 2 could get free Wi-Fi for the duration of the tournament.

It's the largest combined professional ATP World Tour and WTA event in the world, so it took some work.

"We were tasked with the responsibility of deploying a wireless network for the entire site—an internal system for verifying tournament participants' credentials, facilitating box office functions, and other internal infrastructure needs, in addition to a massive, public Wi-Fi system," offers up Mark McComas, vice president of West Coast Networking. "The driving force behind this deployment was providing public Wi-Fi access that would enable patrons to easily access the BNP Paribas Open Mobile Application."

The set up had to be able to handle 2 terabytes of data at any given time during the tournament's run.

A comprehensive Ruckus Smart Wi-Fi network was installed and it actually is managed year-round to provide Wi-Fi access for all of the other events held at the Garden by West Coast Networking of Palm Desert, CA. They are a managed service provider (MSP) and a Ruckus Big Dog channel partner.

Over 130 indoor and outdoor Ruckus ZoneFlex access points were installed throughout the Garden.

The outdoor APs, featured integrated antennas with patented BeamFlex technology for great performance in high-density, high-capacity areas.

A 4 GB fiber broadband connection was the backhaul for the system.

Even fans watching video coverage had a great experience.

"The biggest thing the BNP Paribas Open App provided was the live video coverage," continued McComas. "Within the App, there were four different BNP Paribas Open live video feeds that users could choose from—stadiums one, two, three and four—so for everyone within the Tennis Garden, they could watch any of the matches on these four courts streamed live via the BNP Paribas Open live video feeds, which was a first for any ATP World Tour/WTA event, so it was quite a milestone for the tennis world."

Rukus Wireless is setting that standard for Wi-Fi in stadiums. This year in Indian Well, they proved they could handle the load.

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