Anzhe Zhang   

The Phoenix area has been seeing a litany of upgrades due to its preparation for Super Bowl 57, where come February next year the National Football League will bring the most-watched television event of the year to the Valley of the Sun.

Having hosted the Super Bowl multiple times before, with Super Bowl 49 in 2015 being the most recent one, it’s safe to say the Arizona host committee isn’t short on experience.

But one new thing that’ll be seeing an upgrade next year will be the stadium’s wireless infrastructure, which will be supported to handle the influx of football fans turning up for the event by Tempe-based company, Engineering Wireless Services (EWS).

“We are in the process of completely replacing all the legacy cellular connectivity inside and outside of the stadium in preparation of Super Bowl LVII,” Jon Szeliga, their sales officer, said, noting that “State Farm Stadium has been a massive undertaking for our teams.”

The company has previously worked with hospitals, airports, and the public safety sector.

In other corporate internet news, Lumen, a “platform” for delivering internet connectivity to parts of states on-demand, announced its plans to expand access to “Phoenix, Mesa, Scottsdale and Tucson” in Arizona. 

Currently, 14 percent of Arizona residents live in areas where broadband access and infrastructure is scarce, while 45 percent of residents only have one internet provider to choose from. It’s estimated that 13 percent of households in the state don’t have internet access.

Last year, the White House’s Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act committed $65 billion towards providing affordable high speed internet access to families across the U.S.