Cellular coverage for venues and districts
For decades a stadium filled once or twice a week and went dark the rest of the time. That model is over. The modern venue anchors a year-round district — apartments, offices, a hotel, restaurants, retail, structured parking and public plazas built around the bowl. Every one of those days runs on a phone: a sold-out night brings a hundred thousand people within an hour, and the rest of the week residents, office tenants, hotel guests and diners fill the same district — all on their own phones, on every carrier. And the crowd is not only an obstacle — a hundred thousand people reaching for the same spectrum in the same hour is a capacity problem no outdoor network was sized for.
ANDREW® brings the mobile operators' networks inside and distributes them across the seating bowl, concourses and steel-and-concrete back-of-house, suites, clubs and premium levels deep in the building, structured and below-grade parking, the hotel, residential and office towers around the venue, and the public plazas and spaces between buildings. Whether the answer is a building-wide distributed antenna system (DAS), targeted small cells or both, ANDREW designs it as a true neutral-host foundation — energy-efficient and ready to scale from a sold-out Saturday to a quiet Tuesday.
Challenges and opportunities
Reliable coverage has to serve two very different demands on the same infrastructure — a Saturday's hundred thousand fans and a Tuesday's residents and workers. This is where in-building cellular coverage matters most.
Event day
An event fills the district faster than any other day of the year, and every fan arrives with a phone expecting to work the way it does at home — none of it on a network the venue owns:
The other 360 days
Most days there is no event and the district still fills, and a district marketed on connectivity is judged on the signal in the elevator, the garage and on the twelfth floor:
Operations & safety
Staff, security, engineers, vendors and first responders work the parts of the district built to stop a signal, at full crowd on event day and alone in the garages after hours:
Deployments
Stadiums and ballparks
Arenas and indoor venues
Stadium-anchored mixed-use districts
Convention and entertainment centers
Hotel, residential and office towers within the district
Structured parking and transportation hubs
Case studies
ANDREW facilitated the design and build of the world's largest in-building wireless network at the Dallas Cowboys' NFL stadium — the first all-digital DAS with all-digital operator connectivity.
ANDREW helped create a frictionless wireless experience for hometown fans of the Cleveland Cavaliers.
ANDREW helped this legendary Chicago sports and entertainment venue upgrade its legacy infrastructure to support 5G networks.
ANDREW and LEADCOM/STA helped Orange Ivory Coast deliver a superior fan experience at AFCON 2024.
The ANDREW advantage
ANDREW all-digital solutions power the world's biggest venues and stadium districts — including AT&T Stadium, the first all-digital DAS with all-digital operator connectivity — from a single arena to a stadium-anchored district.
Our comprehensive offering for stadiums, arenas and entertainment districts spans the ERA® DAS platform, ONECELL® in-building small cells and expert design and support.
Partnering with ANDREW means wireless technology built for long-term simplicity, efficiency and sustainability — through 5G and beyond.
Featured solutions
ANDREW brings reliable, high-capacity 4G/5G inside with DAS and small cells, adding coverage and capacity across the bowl, concourses, suites, parking and the towers of the district.
ANDREW indoor solutions deliver the reliability and redundancy security teams and first responders need across a packed venue and district.
Featured resources
Brochure · CO-200823-EN
See how ANDREW delivers reliable, high-capacity 4G/5G across stadiums, arenas and entertainment districts.
Article
How ANDREW handled record-setting 5G traffic at State Farm Stadium for Super Bowl LVII.
Frequently asked questions
Answers about indoor signal, DAS, small cells, carriers, Wi-Fi and high-capacity event coverage.
The macro network was built to cover ground, not to punch through a packed district. A stadium is one of the hardest RF environments there is — a steel-and-concrete bowl, tens of thousands of bodies absorbing signal, premium levels deep in the building, and glass towers and structured parking around it. Adding towers outside fixes neither the obstacle nor the capacity.
A DAS distributes every operator's network across the venue and the district on one shared system; a small cell adds focused cellular capacity in a specific area. ANDREW offers both — the ERA® DAS platform and ONECELL® in-building small cells — and helps match the right approach, or a combination, to your venue and district.
Yes. ANDREW's platform is one infrastructure, approved by global operators, carrying public cellular, private networks and public safety from pre-4G through 5G.
Yes — they do different jobs. Every venue and building runs Wi-Fi for ticketing and point-of-sale, building systems, and guest and resident networks. A DAS or small cell brings the operators' cellular networks to every fan, resident, worker and responder on any carrier, with nothing to join — and only cellular carries E911 that knows where the caller actually is, Wireless Emergency Alerts to every device in the venue and public-safety communications.
Yes — the bowl needs cellular capacity built for the moment a full house reaches for the network at once. The platform is engineered for capacity, not just coverage, so mobile ticketing, streaming and payments hold up on a sold-out night — and the district's everyday users stay covered the other 360 days.
Proven. ANDREW's all-digital DAS is operating at scale today — including AT&T Stadium, the first all-digital DAS with all-digital operator connectivity — on more than a decade of digital deployments, and is first to connect all three major U.S. operators, across every major RAN vendor, digitally on one DAS.
Let’s discuss how ANDREW can help get you there.
