As of: February 15, 2024, 2:51 p.m
By: Sebastian Hölzle
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Construction site of the SAP Garden in Munich's Olympic Park.
© Martin Hangen
In the SAP Garden in Munich's Olympic Park, over 10,000 spectators will soon be watching basketball and ice hockey games.
To ensure that fans have stable internet reception, adventurous assembly work was carried out.
Munich - At FC Bayern games in Munich's Allianz Arena you can already see why we have to think differently when building modern stadiums: thousands of people take a selfie first after entering the arena.
The photo will be sent to friends and relatives - everyone should know that you have got one of the coveted tickets.
During the game, cell phone contacts continue to be provided with voice messages, photos and videos - or the mountains of data are immediately stored on storage in the cloud.
If mobile phone operators were not prepared for such a high volume of data, the mobile phone network would quickly reach its capacity limits - but that is exactly not what happens.
Assembly at dizzy heights: O2/Telefónica sets up a mobile network for the arena
Why this is the case can currently be observed at a construction site in Munich's Olympic Park.
There, Red Bull Stadion München GmbH is building a hall for the FC Bayern basketball team and the EHC Red Bull Munich ice hockey team.
The sports arena called SAP Garden will accommodate up to 12,500 spectators and games will be played here in the 2024/2025 season.
To ensure that ice hockey and basketball fans have stable internet reception, Red Bull has teamed up with the Spanish telephone giant O2/Telefónica.
The hall should have its own mobile phone network.
Oliver Hempfling working on a mobile phone antenna.
© Martin Hangen
The German headquarters of O2/Telefónica is only a few hundred meters away from the Olympic Park, so the order within sight of the 146 meter high O2 Tower is a prestigious project for the company.
Technicians have now completed the assembly of the antennas – at dizzying heights.
“We didn’t put up one antenna that covered everything, we installed a total of 350 antennas throughout the entire indoor and outdoor area,” says Oliver Hempfling, who coordinated the installation work for O2/Telefónica.
24 antennas are installed under the 27 meter high roof structure of the hall alone.
Each antenna is about the size of a shoebox.
“You have to imagine the antennas like showers: each one is positioned so that it covers part of a spectator area,” says Hempfling.
The antennas were installed either using cherry pickers or industrial climbers.
In addition to ultra-fast 5G reception, the antennas should also cover the frequency ranges in the 4G/LTE network and in the 2G/GSM network.
The antennas are attached like showers.
© Martin Hangen
SAP Garden will open soon: How the network will work then
The antenna boxes in the roof construction are difficult to see from below.
But Hempfling knows a way through the labyrinth of construction sites; stairwells lead to the steel framework of the hall roof.
Here, 27 meters above the hall floor, the antennas can be reached via walkways.
The boxes protrude over the abyss and are therefore easy to see.
You just need to be free from dizziness when you look over the railing; underneath the antennas you can free fall downwards.
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Fiber optic cables go from each antenna to distribution boxes, from where the cables go to a central control room.
Once the SAP Garden is opened, the information from every photo sent, every video and every cell phone conversation will pass through this room.
The windowless chamber is still empty and dark, but it will soon be equipped with control cabinets, says Hempfling.
Three cables should lead from the control room to the outside: One cable leads to the O2 network, a second cable leads to the Telekom network, and a third cable leads to the Vodafone network.
“Although we as O2/Telefónica operate the mobile technology in the hall, customers of other providers will also be able to use the network,” says Hempfling.
The arena viewed from outside.
© Martin Hangen
And there should be space for a possible fourth user: the stadium operator Red Bull. The mobile communications infrastructure can be used for its own private 5G network.
Such private 5G networks are already standard in industry today, for example to network machines and robots with one another.
Something similar is planned for the SAP Garden: the technology can be used for live broadcasts.
Television cameras and cell phones are to be networked and new perspectives for sports reporting are to emerge.
This means that not only the spectators in the SAP Garden, but also the spectators at home would benefit from the 5G technology in the hall roof.
BY SEBASTIAN HÖLZLE