• HPE will deploy outdoor Wi-Fi 7 and use Aruba Central to manage data-centre, campus and edge networking at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium
  • The upgrade brings more of the stadium network into one management environment, but its effect under peak event loads has not yet been demonstrated

The fact

Tottenham Hotspur and HPE announced an expansion of their technology partnership on 2 September, including a network upgrade at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London. HPE has worked with the club on the stadium's technology infrastructure since before the venue opened in 2019.

The new deployment will add outdoor Wi-Fi 7 and use HPE Aruba Networking Central to manage data-centre, campus and edge networking. HPE says the platform will analyse network and user data, detect problems and automate some responses. ClearPass Policy Manager will provide identity-based network access controls.

The network supports services including public connectivity, ticketless entry, cashless payments and other stadium operations. HPE has not disclosed the number of Wi-Fi 7 access points, a completion date or performance results from events using the upgraded network.

The assessment

At a stadium, the difficult moment comes when something fails during a live event and the network team has minutes to find the cause. Guest Wi-Fi, payments, ticketing and other venue systems can depend on different parts of the network, making faults harder to trace when those systems are managed separately.

Putting data-centre, campus and edge visibility into Aruba Central should give Tottenham fewer separate systems to check when tracing a fault. That could make diagnosis quicker, but HPE has not published event-day performance or incident-resolution data. Wi-Fi 7 improves the wireless layer, but it does not by itself solve problems elsewhere in the network.

For BTW readers, the useful test is whether Tottenham can find and clear faults faster once the new system is running. Incident and availability data from full-capacity events would show whether unified management changes day-to-day operations.

What to watch

Watch for completion of the Wi-Fi 7 deployment and performance results from football matches, NFL games or concerts. Concurrent users, connection failures, network availability and incident-resolution times would provide useful evidence. Results from full-capacity events will show whether the common management layer improves operations as well as wireless capacity.