How a football game and a hurricane played a part in baseball by @Lihsa

Forgive me, but I have to say this more for myself: my hometown team, the Houston Astros, are the 2017 World Series Champions.

I know, I know, if my sister’s reading this, she’ll tell you that I’m not much of a sports fan.

But this series. This season. This year. Incredible.

Watching the 2017 World Series on social media

I watched the game on Twitter. As I’ve mentioned before, I don’t do cable. I do Roku. And despite YouTube’s sponsorship by its YouTube TV, YouTube wasn’t really live-streaming the game. I did watch a few minutes of the game on YouTube Live through a Mexican TV channel. But I don’t speak Spanish very well, so I gave up after 10 minutes. And, frankly, my heart couldn’t handle the stress.

Instead, I followed the World Series’ Twitter Moment, which kept a live score of all the games. It was pretty slick—a top bar, just under the Twitter navigation, kept a live scoreboard. Tweets ran below it. And you should have seen the live stream—a river ran through it. I wasn’t scrolling, I was spinning through 100s of tweets per minute.

In fact, Ad Age reported that 62,000 tweets were generated at the final out of the seventh game. It was the most tweeted moment of the seven-game series. If you want to see all of the Twitter stats—sorry, Twitter isn’t giving up any hard data, just lists and posts—check out the Twitter blog.

World Series data usage

Details are still coming in on data usage in the respective team stadiums. Several sites solely dedicated to stadium communication networks have not yet posted the latest results. The Houston Chronicle did report that during Astros’ home games 3 and 4, fans at Minute Maid Park burned up 2 TB of mobile data on AT&T’s network.

2017 World Series, the Houston Astros, social media and data usage - @Lihsa - 3 Geeks

2017 LI Super Bowl network upgrades

Luckily this year, Houston made significant upgrades to its networks for February’s Super Bowl. In the past, Houston stadiums had abysmal coverage and way too many dead zones.

The Broadcast Bridge reported that, to prepare for the Super Bowl, T-Mobile permanently increased 4G LTE by nearly 20 times its previous strength. Sprint bumped up by 500 percent. ATT added 749 antennas and 549 cell towers. Verizon added 783 antennas. Plus, temporary boosters were added to the areas surrounding all 3 Houston arenas and conference centers. So the arenas were ready when Super Bowl LI broke the 37 TB wireless mark.

Hurricane Harvey prepared Houston for digital congestion

Thank God, because Houston needed it for Harvey.

CNET reported that AT&T and Verizon ran the traps during Hurricane Preparedness Season, running drills and tests. Before Harvey made landfall, both communication networks reported “ready” for Harvey.

When cell towers did go down—a reported 5 percent were disabled—COWS were deployed. COWS are cell sites on wheels, which can be transported to damaged towers. Houstonians—more fortunate than its coastal neighbors—were able to maintain stable communication networks through out the hurricane.

Which brings us to the 2017 World Series

Three years after Sports Illustrated cover prediction and in an odd statistical coincidence, the Houston Astros won the seventh game of the series with a 5 – 1 victory, after the city fought back 51 inches of rain.

The Houston Astros, with one of the most diverse teams in the league, beat out New York and Los Angeles.

Houston showed why the fourth largest city in the US, down on the third coast, is the real force to be reckoned with. We are, after all, #HoustonStrong.