The carrier-grade fibre powering the stadium’s connectivity has Vocus’ “IP Burst” feature turned on, which allows the stadium to subscribe to a 1Gbps connection but burst up to 5Gbps when needed.

The stadium can access the full 5Gbps speed up to 5% of the time at no additional cost – enough time to cover the stadium’s current program of game and event days.

That extra speed supports an immersive digital experience for guests, including high-speed wireless connectivity for tens of thousands of spectators at once.

How IP Burst can help businesses

Vocus’ IP Burst feature will benefit a wide range of businesses, says Bryan Turnbull, Vocus State Manager NSW Enterprise & Government.

“When we connect fibre to a building, the link is often capable of much faster speeds than what a customer has ordered from us."

“We think it makes sense to unlock the speed for customers and give them the full flexibility of the link to provide the speed needed for development and testing of high bandwidth applications. Business and government organisations might also need to do cloud migrations or scheduled backups with very high bandwidth requirements for short periods of time, or share massive data sets with collaborators in an AI/ML environment,” he explains.

“Being able to instantly scale up to very high bandwidth is a powerful enabler that clears the path to get business done more quickly,” he says.

Allianz Stadium’s ambitious technology vision

Allianz Stadium has a vision of being 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 5Gbps fibre will underpin the technological innovation within the stadium, including more than 1,500 networked NEC information screens, giant bonded LED displays running for 1.1km and jumbo 27m Daktronics scoreboards in the stadium bowl.

However, it will be people, not screens, who will really benefit from the 5Gbps pipe: a massive, precisely engineered Wi-Fi 6 network of 800 meshed wireless access points will power game day connectivity for up to 50,000 guests.

The Wi-Fi will support the community with live social sharing as well as helping people finding their way from their couch to their seat with the stadium’s companion app. The stadium is also looking at adding augmented reality and other applications benefiting from high bandwidth to improve customer experience.

The same specification of Vocus fibre has been connected to the Sydney Cricket Ground and WIN Stadium in Wollongong too, Blight says, allowing the multiple stadiums to share a larger pool of bandwidth and providing multi-fibre redundancy into each stadium.

“With Vocus, we’ve got two fibre links going into each stadium, running out in different directions, through separate conduits. It really gives us confidence in the service, no matter what might happen – even if a backhoe digs up one fibre path kilometres away, the others will stay online, so it won’t affect us.” “Vocus was also really the only service provider able to provide a commercially aligned internet service that met our unique needs as a large venue,” he said. “It is only charging us for two 1Gbps links, and the 95th percentile model for usage means we will only pay more if we go over the 1Gbps base speed for more than 5% of the time.”

Having so much headroom available on the link will smooth the path for Venues NSW to do future deals with sporting codes and event promoters, Blight says.

“Sports teams and concert promoters are starting to demand high speed connectivity when negotiating stadium deals,” he says.

“The FIFA Womens’ World Cup is coming to Allianz Stadium in 2023, the Cricket World Cup to the SCG and the UCI World Cycling Championships to Wollongong. Their bandwidth requirements are increasing.”

Behind Vocus’ multi-gigabit strategy

Vocus State Manager NSW Enterprise & Government, Bryan Turnbull, said the unlocked speed offered by IP Transit was one-way Vocus was contributing to building Australia’s digital economy and encouraging customers to find new and innovative applications to make the most of high-capacity connections.

“Australian businesses and 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,” he said.

Turnbull said the IP Burst offer was possible because Vocus owns and operates its own fibre network.

“Other providers that simply resell others’ infrastructure may not have the flexibility to offer these high-speed burst capabilities at an overall reduced cost,” he said.

“However, because Vocus has its own 25,000 km fibre network around Australia, we can help customers with more tailored technical and commercial solutions, priced in ways that help them grow without as much upfront cost.”