Vodafone Qatar celebrates its success post Qatar’s delivery of the largest tournament in the world. The company extends its heartfelt congratulations to Qatar and the official event organisers for hosting an outstanding tournament and praises its employees and partners for delivering on its promise to be the network of fans for residents of Qatar and visitors from over 194 countries.
To support these efforts, Vodafone enabled its world class network to provide an unforgettable fan experience by providing services ranging from smooth roaming packages to superfast network speeds, dedicated fan offers, and access to free public Wi-Fi that kept fans connected throughout the tournament.
Joining the celebration, Vodafone unveiled its ‘We Fan Together’ campaign with the mission to empower fans with the latest technologies and activities to deliver an exceptional and engaging fan experience. 1.8 million roaming customers latched on to Vodafone’s 5G roaming network. Of this, 1 million customers were active roamers, who made 3.9 million calls and used 854 TB of data whilst roaming.
To enable fans’ connectivity, Vodafone Fan SIMs and packages were made available at all land, sea and air entry points and hundreds of other locations in Qatar. Over 419,000 fans enjoyed free Unlimited Data Plus Voice for two days and were then able to recharge and get 7- or 14-day packs with unlimited data, local and international calls, 22GB of GCC roaming data, and Entertainment vouchers.
Underpinned by its robust network and range of partnerships and digital solutions, including the use of emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Virtual Reality (VR), Vodafone created a seamless SIM activation process in which users could activate their SIMs online without visiting a store. Vodafone saw that the eSIM was a popular choice amongst fans, with 69% of customers activating their eSIM digitally. Over 50% of recharges for Vodafone Fan SIMs were done on digital channels.
In preparation for the tournament, Vodafone deployed more than 365 engineers and experts and laid more than 400 km of fiber optic cable to connect the main event locations such as stadiums, training sites, transport hubs, media centers, fan festivals, fan villages and major tourist attractions. Mobile network services with more than 8,466 cells served these venues. To ensure adequate network capacity and full resiliency, Vodafone invested in a 1.2Tbps backbone capacity. High-capacity solutions such as dual beams and hexa beams were deployed in highly loaded areas to ensure customers enjoyed a seamless data experience.
Despite the huge increase in internet network traffic, particularly at sites of high footfall such as stadiums, fan’s experienced nonstop enjoyment in the sporting festivities. Vodafone’s network maintained a high-quality connectivity experience and superior download and upload speeds for users. Vodafone’s 5G network coverage was provided across all eight of Qatar’s tournament stadiums, where over 15 million calls were made and over 1,188 TB of data consumed by fans during the matches. During the final match and at the height of celebrations, 45.8 TB of data were consumed, 956,000 voice calls were made, and 57,000 customers roamed with Vodafone.
Furthermore, Vodafone deployed mmWave 5G which supports higher data speeds than other 5G spectrums reaching up to 4.6 Gbps on the downlink and 734Mbps on the uplink to support special use cases. The average download speed at the stadiums was 707mbps on 5G with maximum download speeds in excess of 1.89Gbps. Even with the high volume of traffic, call setup rates remained high at 99.92% with call drop rates as low as 0.09%.
Knowing public transportation would be key for fans in Qatar, Vodafone partnered with Mowasalat, the official transportation company in Qatar, to provide exclusive network coverage to 90% of the Wi-Fi enabled buses in the country. Vodafone’s free public Wi-Fi service spanned over 4000 buses and 1000 taxis, as well as the entire Doha Metro network, courtesy of a partnership with Qatar Rail (Q-Rail). The company noted that 2.38 million fans used 328TB of data while using Qatar’s public transport system.
Vodafone Qatar also worked closely with business customers across Qatar to empower fan experiences behind the scenes of the tournament through its enterprise solutions. This included enabling instant and secure communications for security agencies, hospitality, and media and event’s organisers with Push-to-Talk Plus.
Vodafone gives credit to its employees for their dedication, work ethic and commitment to excellence, which made the network of fans possible.
Vodafone Qatar is committed to building a world-class connectivity infrastructure to continually meet its customers’ digital demands. Through its national campaign Vodafone has successfully enhanced the experiences of local and international fans and empowered them to unite in the name of sport.
To find out more about Vodafone Qatar’s recent ‘We Fan Together’ campaign, its services and on-ground activations, visit: https://www.vodafone.qa/fans