German telco Deutsche Telekom has deployed a mobile coverage upgrade for Bayer 04 Leverkusen's BayArena stadium ahead of the new Bundesliga season.

DT has installed 41 new antennas directly above the stands at the 30,000-capacity stadium.

The telco has divided the stadium into 14 mobile sectors as part of plans to allow the available capacity to be distributed specifically to the individual stands.

The antennas are aligned with the respective spectator areas and ensure high-performance mobile coverage even when the stands are packed. claims the carrier.

In total, 15 antennas cover the lower tier, with 26 located in the upper tier. Both LTE and 5G are used on mobile frequencies between 800 and 3,600MHz.

"A stable, fast network is now an essential part of the stadium experience,” said Mathias Poeten, responsible for mobile network expansion at Deutsche Telekom. “That's why we're creating the necessary capacity at the BayArena so that tens of thousands of fans can be online quickly and reliably at the same time."

Work on the upgrades started as soon as last season's football ended in May. This saw the installation of five kilometers of high-frequency cable, constructed cable trays, distribution boxes, and four new operations rooms at the BayArena.

The antennas and cables were installed by industrial climbers, noted the telco, which also revealed that its new network infrastructure is designed as a shared system, meaning that other network operators can share the system and connect their own mobile technology to this, rather than installing separate antennas in the stadium.

It's not just the inside of the stadium that has been given a coverage boost, but outside the ground, three additional microcells along key access routes have been installed to create network capacity in areas with high foot traffic before and after the game.

Further planned network expansion upgrades are set to come in the future, added Deutsche Telekom, as the telco aims to improve mobile coverage along the routes to the stadium and in other areas.