by Ben Munson |

May 10, 2016 4:56pm

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AT&T (NYSE: T) and DAS provider Mobilitie have released some numbers for mobile data usage rates at Churchill Downs during the Kentucky Derby, including what the companies are calling a record of 815 GB used during a single hour.

The record for peak hourly usage occurred between 6 p.m. and 7 p.m. EST during the race and includes data that ran over the DAS network as well as over AT&T’s nearby Cells on Wheels (COW) and cell sites. Overall, the companies say AT&T customers near Churchill Downs burned through 11.4 terabytes of data during the weekend. The total means data use has grown 430 percent over the past four years.

The updates Mobilitie this year made to the underground server room and its managed distributed antenna system on site were designed to boost capacity by 50 percent. It ended up supporting more than twice the amount of data (4.3 terabytes) that ran over AT&T’s network last year.

The neutral-host DAS constructed by Mobilitie consists of more than 290 antennas and more than 1 million feet of fiber optic cable running through the venue.

In addition to AT&T, T-Mobile (NYSE:TMUS) also used Mobilitie’s DAS at Churchill Downs to support its customers mobile data usage.

For the entire Derby weekend, AT&T and Verizon (NYSE: VZ) saw a combined 20.15 terabytes of data — a total of Verizon’s 8.75 terabytes and AT&T’s 11.4. As Mobile Sports Report points out, that’s a big increase over the 2 terabytes AT&T customers used and the 1.37 terabytes Verizon customers used during the Kentucky Derby weekend two years ago.

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