AT&T boosts power for smartphone users at Citizens Bank Park

Lazaros Kalemis is a loyal user of Apple's iPhone. But when he went to Phillies games at Citizens Bank Park earlier this year, his smartphone seemed to play dumb. He'd joke with friends that it was easier to find AT&T billboards than bars of service on his signal display.

No longer. The wireless-phone industry may be facing a "data tsunami" in network demand, as Nielsen analyst Roger Entner describes it. But AT&T says it has finally solved bandwidth problems at the ballpark that have plagued it since last year.

AT&T officials say they have installed a state-of-the-art system that adds the equivalent of nearly three cell towers within the 45,000-seat stadium. They say the system quadruples the channel capacity available to fans of the Phils, who have sold out every home game so far this season.

Kalemis watched the team lose a recent heartbreaker to the Mets after AT&T's system was finally up and running. But his iPhone, at least, didn't frustrate him.

"It worked perfectly," said Kalemis, chief executive officer of Alpha Card Services, a Huntingdon Valley credit card processor.

AT&T has faced an engineering and a public relations challenge at Citizens Bank Park this year, both partly of its own making.

The nation's second-largest wireless provider is the exclusive carrier for the iPhone, a data-hungry device that encourages its owners to access the Internet and use thousands of specialized programs, or "apps."

The result has been a surge in demand from iPhone users that taxed AT&T's network. And it shows its stresses most obviously at places such as "the Bank," where an estimated 5,000 to 10,000 iPhone users might congregate more than 80 times a year.

AT&T added to its technological problem by promising a fix as the season began. When the fix hadn't materialized by the midseason break for the All-Star Game, subscribers were frustrated.

"It's been our one sore spot," said Dan Lafond, AT&T's regional vice president and general manager.

Some improvements over the off-season mitigated the problem, Lafond said, as has the strategic use of mobile cell sites. But he said he received constant reminders that the system was overloaded from friends and family, as well as from Phillies staffers who use AT&T.

"They give feedback. Feedback is a gift," Lafond said with a smile.