Eras Tour "problematic" challenge for telcos

Ensuring Swifties have reliable mobile connectivity during the Australian leg of the Eras Tour is likely one of the biggest hurdles telcos will face this year.

Telstra Executive for Technology Development & Innovation, Channa Seneviratne, addressed some of the issues in a (non-Taylor-Swift-related) media briefing earlier this week.

"It’s a challenge. When you have 96,000 people in a stadium, it’s problematic," said Seneviratne. "We design coverage for people sitting in the stands, it’s not catered for people in the field. There’s not normally football players walking around the field on their phones."

Mobile towers have a finite amount of capacity at each network site, and the more people trying to share photos and footage, the more strain that puts on a mobile network. Telcos have tactics to address this for large events, however.

5G, for example, can support more simultaneous connections than 4G, which can help reduce congestion. mmWave 5G has even more capacity and has been long touted as a solution for events like Taylor Swift, but so far very few phones support the technology in Australia. It's only available in Pro-models in the Google Pixel family. Senevirante said anyone using a Pixel 8 Pro at a Melbourne show would have had the best network experience.

A second spokesperson added that Telstra has a "fully stacked" network on all coverage bands - including mmWave - at the MCG.

"There is however no dedicated on-field capacity or infrastructure for concert setting so on-field experience was limited," said the Telstra spokesperson. "Our team did work through all possible optimisations and checks to address this. The technology set […] is great for sports but not great for concerts if you find yourself on the field experiencing the show."

In Sydney, Telstra says it's upgraded Accor Stadium with a new 5G antenna system that should improve network performance for attendees. It will also augment the network with a Cell on Wheels - a portable base station that can increase connectivity - to support Taylor Swift fans listening on from outside the venue.

"The network supporting the customer experience at the Taylor Swift concerts will be managed in real-time by our radio engineers, both onsite and remotely in addition to our operations centre," said a Telstra spokesperson. "It is a cross-company effort."

While Telstra doesn't have mmWave coverage at Accor Stadium, Optus rebuilt its network at the venue in December last year and added the capability.

"We implemented a 5G MIMO architecture distributed antenna system and 5G mmWave solution," an Optus spokesperson told WhistleOut. "This infrastructure spans approximately 100 kilometres of connected cabling, over 900 antennas and includes hundreds of associated equipment positioned throughout the venue. This distributed antenna system also provides specialised capacity for users located on what would usually be the field of play area as well as the typical seating bowl and back of house areas."

"This upgrade facilitated the seamless sharing of photos, calls, and messages during the 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup and will continue to provide our customers with improved connectivity and coverage at future events."

A Vodafone spokesperson told WhistleOut that it will be undertaking pre-event network health checks, live performance monitoring, and implementing special event parameters to make sure the network flows right.

"We are expecting another big bump in data use when the Swifties descend on Sydney this weekend and are putting in place measures to ensure our network is ready for the Tay-Tay takeover," said the spokesperson.

Despite the challenges an event like the Eras Tour poses for telcos, Taylor Swift fans in Melbourne managed to use a record-breaking amount of data.

A Telstra spokesperson told WhistleOut that Swifties used 35TB of data on the Telstra network across the three nights in Melbourne, which is just over 11TB per show. The spokesperson said fans used almost twice as much data as any other concert at the MCG.

Optus customers uploaded 1.7TB of data during her first show in Melbourne, which the telco says is double what its customers used during Ed Sheeran's first show at the MCG last year.

Lastly, a Vodafone spokesperson told WhistleOut that its customers used close to 1TB of data per show.

While Optus' figures didn’t include downloads, the figures suggest at least 14TB of data usage per show across the three mobile networks. That's roughly equivalent to 3.5 million 12MP photos or 1.4 million short HD videos.

Alex Choros

Managing Editor + Group Telco Editor | X | Instagram | Threads | LinkedIn

Alex Choros is the Managing Editor of WhistleOut Australia and an award-winning journalist. He's been writing about consumer technology for over a decade and is an expert on the Australian telco sector, to the point where he knows far too many phone and internet plans by heart. In addition to leading the WhistleOut editorial team, Alex is responsible for ruining the office Sonos with his troubled taste in music.

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