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3G and Wifi at PAX?
kdpape
Registered User new member
Registered User new member
this will be my first year at pax and i'm really excited. I was wondering how good the 3G is in the show and how much free wifi there is (if any) and how consistent. I'm a big iphone and android user for twitter and blogging during the show and want to make sure i'm covered.
thanks.
any hints/tips are appreciated.
keith
thanks.
any hints/tips are appreciated.
keith
kdpape on
0
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Organizer of the Post-PAX Party. You should come!
Satellite Theater for life!
Thats what I had to do at the last prime and at East. Data was still fucked though
I personally have never had a problem with cell service, sms, 3G, etc. I've even successfully used walkies around PAX, at Prime last year and at East earlier this year, and didn't have problems there either.
I do recall a mention last year (after the fact) that if someone contacts AT&T and mentions there's a giant convention of people prone to heavy gadget use they can deploy a temporary tower to help ease the burden. Not sure how much truth there was to that.
What you are speaking of is something called a micro cell and the building owners would have to request the installation of something like that. What the micro cell does is put several small access points in the building and ties them to a fiber connection to dump into the AT&T network.
Now the reason that the WSCTC doesnt have one of these is because of contracts and costs. I asked my older brother who is a director at AT&T mobility and what he advised me of the process (and he didnt specifically mention the WSCTC but he was speaking in general about how this works) is that the building owners and AT&T enter a contract where the costs of installation and operation are split between both parties. It is up to the building owner to determine how they wish to pay for such costs but the fees themselves are not cheap.....at all. As such most parties wish for AT&T to cover all the costs since its AT&T's network, which in some cases they will negotiate those terms. Where it gets sticky though is most building want to then share in the profit from the calls on the microcell since its in their building on their own fiber line. The problem comes with dealing with different plans on every phone (especially unlimited plans) and different costs on each and ultimately AT&T would loose their butts many times over as a result.
So in short there isnt a microcell nor will there likely ever be one in the WSCTC because its too prohibitively expensive.
Yeah, the expo hall is especially brutal.
Organizer of the Post-PAX Party. You should come!
Satellite Theater for life!
As long as you don't have an iPhone 4. :-P
That is way awesome!
Most of my group was in the at&t no service boat last year too, even the non-iphone users. Oh well, this year we know how to deal and more of us are in BYOC.
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glhf at getting a 4g signal inside the WSCTC when you arent near a window :P
it did great loading text based pages, but anything more and it would assplode...
as for 3G I would assume it would be mediocare at best.
Dakinggamer's Paradise
PAX Prime/West 2024 - hotel room [] 4 day badge [√]
That said, everyone's pretty spot on. Outside the Expo Hall 3G/Edge worked fine, if a little slower than usual. I could still bring up the EXPO Junkies PAX site in fairly short order.
I learned within an hour to stay away from all WiFi at PAX. It was so bogged down with users that it took longer to load a text based webpage on the WiFi than it took to load YouTube and rich media websites over 3G. It took so long to try using WiFi that my battery lost it's charge quicker than just using 3G.
Of course finding a charging station isn't going to be hard this year, now that I have a BYOC seat!
:arrow: So in regards to this question for another thread, I might be better off getting a different provider.
I never finish anyth
That $10 is, in theory, going 100% towards the cost of deployment of their 4G network. Whether or not a prioritization scheme is in effect (or could be deployed, etc etc), I do not know, given that I am not an engineer in that field... Provided there is 4G coverage, data services may be available, however, also keep in mind that PAX also has a tendency to attract attendees who own similar devices. It may be entirely possible that the concentration of EVOs is high enough to impact 4G services.
Eh with e3 companies typically drop in small cell towers that are built into semi trucks. With any luck this will happen for pax i know the information has been given to the proper people lets hope it works out.
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It would be a concern if HTC could actually get enough of them produced to worry about (I kid!)
I'm hoping that, even if slower than normal due to traffic, 4g service will still be able to outperform 3g/wifi options at the event. If not, well, I still love my EVO.
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But I'll be on T-Mobile as well. :P
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The way you can tell that they don't use ATT's towers is by standing next to someone with an iphone at the convention center and you have service while they don't.
This was me during Prime last year (as the T-Mobile user).