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Thread: Wireless Services @ AirVenture 2011 (Not Wi-Fi). Looking for feed-back.

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  1. #1

    Join Date
    Aug 2011
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    Wireless Services @ AirVenture 2011 (Not Wi-Fi). Looking for feed-back.

    I am looking for some feed-back regarding wireless service coverage, capacity, speeds, etc from AirVenture 2011. Which carrier do you have and what were your principal challenges (if any)?

    I do wish to offer a "hat-tip" to John Carrier and his IT team. It is a remarkable task to provide Wi-Fi to attendee's at no cost and provide the coverage demand of same. Sure, there were very busy nodes and access points, yet my tests at random points showed connectivity and access. A much greater improvement over years past for sure.

    Disclosure: I am from a major wireless services provider and attending this years' AirVenture with me was the Network Manager Wisconsin and two other states. I prefer to leave the name of my company out of this post for I am seeking unbiased reviews. Thanks for any reply's.

  2. #2
    Adam Smith's Avatar
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    Well I'll be the first to give a thumbs-down to AT&T.

    2009 was a catastrophically bad year, AT&T services collapsed completely at times. 2010 was much better with service that was slower than normal, but acceptable considering the environment. Unfortunately 2011 was a big step backwards. Wednesday to Friday the phone service was un-usable. On the rare times I got connected, the call would be dropped within a minute. Text messages and voicemails came through OK. Data very slow.

  3. #3
    CarlOrton's Avatar
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    I'll second what Adam said. I, too, have ATT on an iPhone. In my opinion, the wifi was a big step back. If I arrived onsite and activated wifi, it wouldn't pop up the license agreement until I tried to access an internet site - as in, if I used a non-Safari tool like weather, that would continue to try and access the server thru 3G; only when I'd try to bring up a page would it request that I read and accept the terms. And then the "accept" button was so small I'd have to zoom in on the screen so that I didn't "fat finger" the "reject" button. Not fun when you want to check something one-handed like while trying to control the drips on your ice cream cone.

    MANY times during the critical parts of the day, as in trying to set up lunch rendezvous or departure times, complete failure from ATT. I couldn't even get single-letter texts out (like 'K' for OK to ACK a received txt).

    ATT (and the others, I'm sure) play games with their prioritization. As in, I could call my buddy on Sprint just about any time, at ANY time of the day and the call would go thru. But, call my wife, also on ATT, and fail, fail, fail, ring - go to VM, fail, fail, etc. I think next year I'll swap phones with my buddy so that I can get through. Also, I could call my wife when she was on another cell site (like at the dorms) and the calls would go through. ATT has the logic set so that "oh, they're calling from the same cell site/COW, so they can't be THAT far; we'll just bounce 'em to VM...)

  4. #4

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    I agree with Adam, most of the latter half of the week it was about a 1 in 8 chance the phonecalls would go through and there was one entire day near the end of the week where my AT&T blackberry was stuck on GSM and basically useless.

  5. #5

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    I'm on ATT with Blackberry and from Sun- Sun the service was horrible. Voice mails were not received until hours after they were left, call quality was poor onsite and failed calls were numerous. My wife and I resorted to Blackberry Messenger to keep in touch but that was delayed at times. Once off site the service worked fine.

  6. #6
    danielfindling's Avatar
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    I used an iphone with ATT. Spotty service and best often no service period. I attended Wednesday through Friday.

  7. #7
    FlyFast's Avatar
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    Marquette, Michigan, United States
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    AT&T iPhone. No data connection at all when I was there on Friday and very spotty (unusable) voice connections.

  8. #8

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    Verizon was no great shakes. At times received a message 'service was not available.' At other times the connection would be lost. Very seldom could I complete even a short conversation without problems.

  9. #9

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    Aug 2011
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    Central Coast CA
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    Get a COW or two

    At the local racetrack where I volunteer, we bring in COWs -- Cell On Wheels -- to augment the local wireless networks during our major events. This has totally cured our latency issues on cell calls.

  10. #10
    Verizon worked well. No problems. 5 years ago I had a problem and they said they would be out and fix it. No more problems that year

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