Vocus unlocks fibre speed for new high-tech Allianz Stadium

The new Allianz Stadium in Sydney had a goal of being a leader in technology and it wanted super-fast fibre connectivity. However, it didn’t need the speed around the clock — just when game days were on.

The new $828m Allianz Stadium in Moore Park, NSW, has taken advantage of an innovative billing arrangement with fibre network and technology specialist Vocus.

Under the deal, the stadium has subscribed to a 1 Gbps connection but can ‘burst’ up to 5 Gbps speed at up to 5% of the time at no additional cost. The Vocus ‘IP Burst with 95th percentile billing’ feature took inspiration from the wholesale telco world (where telcos buy capacity from each other) and is now available to its enterprise and government agency customers.

The five-times extra speed available to the stadium will be used during football matches and concerts to provide an immersive digital experience for guests. A crowd of up to 50,000 fans can experience Wi-Fi connectivity, while the fibre simultaneously supports all of the stadium’s IP-connected services.

The venue is also connected over the Vocus fibre network into the broader group of Venues NSW sites, including the Sydney Cricket Ground and WIN Stadium in Wollongong. The interlinked network allows the multiple stadiums to share a larger pool of bandwidth and also provides multi-fibre redundancy into each site.

The stadium’s ambitious technology vision

The vision was for Allianz Stadium to be one of the most technologically advanced stadiums in the world, according to Tim Blight, Head of Technology at NSW Government’s Venues NSW.

Vocus’ superfast 5 Gbps fibre underpins the technological innovation within the stadium, including more than 1500 networked NEC information screens, giant bonded LED displays running for 1.1 km and jumbo 27 m Daktronics scoreboards in the stadium bowl.

However, it is the spectators — not the screens — that really benefit from the 5 Gbps pipe and a carefully engineered Wi-Fi 6 network of 800 meshed wireless access points now powers game day connectivity at the stadium for up to 50,000 guests. The Wi-Fi supports the community with live internet connectivity including helping guests find their way from the couch to their seats, along with future experiences that the stadium is currently evaluating.

Two fibre links run into each stadium through separate conduits, delivering the redundancy required by the application. Even if a backhoe digs up one fibre path kilometres away, the others will stay online.

Vocus was able to provide a commercially aligned internet service that met the stadium’s specific needs. The unique billing arrangement gives Venues NSW the headroom needed to do future deals with sporting codes and event promoters that increasingly demand high-speed connectivity for events.

Behind Vocus’ multi-gigabit strategy

According to Vocus State Manager NSW Enterprise & Government Bryan Turnbull, the unlocked speed offered by Vocus’ IP Transit is one way the company is contributing to building Australia’s digital economy and encouraging customers to find new and innovative applications to make the most of high-capacity connections. Across Australia, government agencies not only rely on having access to internet, but also real speed to experiment with the most cutting-edge concepts outside of data centres.

In the case of Allianz Stadium, NSW Government’s Venues NSW wanted to get super-fast connectivity where its data was being generated — at football matches, concerts and other special events — but another agency could equally benefit.

For example, huge off-site backups or a government department migrating an on-premises server to a cloud data centre could complete the task at multi-gigabit speeds within the 5% time allowance within the month. An AI lab at an educational institution could sync large datasets with other researchers around the globe, even if their bandwidth requirement was lower for the rest of the month.

The IP Burst with 95th Percentile offer is possible because Vocus owns and operates its own 25,000 km fibre network around Australia. Providers that had to resell access through other networks may not have the flexibility to offer a similar package.

In addition, the fibre installed by Vocus is often capable of much faster speeds than required, so it makes sense to give clients access to the burst bandwidth only when needed. Over time, it is it expected that customer use of bandwidth will grow as business cases for new applications are proven.

Unlocked fibre speeds open to government agencies now

The IP Burst with 95th percentile billing feature is available to any Australian business or government agency that can be connected to the Vocus network. The maximum burst speed can be negotiated with the customer, with speeds dependent on the available network capacity at the specific location.