Wi-fi plan at Amex as Albion app reaches more fans

Brighton and Hove Albion's ground-breaking app is being made available to more supporters ready for the start of the new season. The official app is now available from both the Apple App Store and Google Play Store, meaning more fans can access it from their mobile phones. It will provide instant team news, live scores, travel information, updates from the club and much more direct to a smartphone at the Amex on matchdays. The app uses innovative software to sidestep the problem of potentially 30,000 fans accessing the internet at once by establishing a network directly between the phones and sharing updates to the app. Away from the Amex the app relies on mobile signal or wifi to keep fans in touch with all the news from the club seven days a week, 24 hours a day. The software which helps the app work within the confines of the Amex has been tested and validated over the past 12 months by the TribeHive team at Sussex University and hundreds of Albion fans, as part of the Digital Stadium Project. It has now also been snapped up by the Football League's digital team and the new technology will be used by fans at QPR, Watford, Birmingham, Bolton and Middlesbrough from the start of the season. Paul Camillin, the Seagulls' head of media, said: 'It is a revolutionary piece of work by Ian Wakeman and his team from the University of Sussex. 'Here at the Amex, we are also in the process of installing wi- fi, and the app's peer-to-peer technology will compliment the free wifi service which will soon be available to all fans inside the stadium. 'The software which has been developed solves the issue of lack of connectivity in any large crowd environment, football matches, stadiums, music gigs, festivals - but it also has potential in terms of more serious issues, where connectivity may not be possible due to power or signal failures. 'The TribeHive team have cleverly designed and built the app so it allows all the phones in the stadium to work together. When you enter the stadium, the phone connects using a unique piece of phone-to-phone software. 'If a phone can't get a connection, those phones running the app that are connected to wifi, or via local 3G or 4G, will pull in updates to the app and share them with other users. All personal data is encrypted using state of the art technology, and other data on the phone is safe and protected.' For more details, visit: www.seagulls.co.uk