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

ATT iphone 3gs. Total failure to make or take calls until Sunday. I arrived Tuesday morning. Txt was about 50% success? I had to keep hitting "try again". Wifi was nonexistent where I camp, all the way out at 2nd and Lindbergh, but I expected that. I'd rather have no wifi but also no noise from the party crowd at night. wifi connectivity inside the airshow was spotty, but I assume that's because the crappy ios and apps try 3g and lock up, so wifi might have been ok but ATT sucked. I'll agree with the other posters, wifi only works after you try a web browser, and get the web login page. I have to zoom in to see the "agree" button. Maybe you have two pages there, redirecting mobile users to a version with a gigantic set of buttons that are usable on an iphone etc?

After the last few years, I basically gave up on phone service during Airventure. I was hoping txt would work better.

ATT's answer to crappy network complaints is to sell customers femtocells and charge them for using their internet connection, so I'm not surprised they fell completely flat during Airventure. Just waiting for my contract to run out then I'm back to Verizon and a new iphone 4.

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Originally Posted by cptomes

ATT's answer to crappy network complaints is to sell customers femtocells and charge them for using their internet connection, so I'm not surprised they fell completely flat during Airventure. Just waiting for my contract to run out then I'm back to Verizon and a new iphone 4.

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As pointed out earlier, having carried a Verizon Blackberry and a AT&T iPHone both during the week showed that Verizon didn't do any better. Both also performed poorly last year when we used my iPhone and Allison's Verizion phone to recall all the pilots whose planes were parked out on taxiway papa. Managed to succeed with four hours to spare before Jack Rousch dumped his plane on that spot.

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Originally Posted by gpinnell

.... EAA Wireless connection useless for more than a few minutes.

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Sorry for your Wi-Fi experience. Please provide more specifics so that we can improve our services. What were you using to access the Wi-Fi? Where? When?

I am running a Evo 3D on Sprint. My cell service was excellent. I was even able to use Qik so that I could have the kids call my wife and talk/see to her. I usually used 3G for my internet access because the EAA Wifi was sloooow (I was less than 50 ft from a access point, I could see the antenna on the telephone pole.) I was able to connect my computer and my phone to the wifi and found that I had a great connection late at night and really early morning. Once people started waking up and sucking bandwidth, I just went back to my cell service. It wasn't a huge deal for me not to have great wifi though. I wasn't at Airventure to peruse the intrawebs...I actually look forward to getting away from the internet, phone, tv, ps3, wii, etc for a week every summer. Ready for next year already.

I had an AT&T Blackberry (from work) with me and the cell service was H O R R I B LE. Couldn't text, couldn't talk on the phone, couldn't look anything up. Basically I had a light duty camera. Probably an over-capacity issue in Oshkosh. My wife's verizon iPhone on the other hand was fine. Data was slow at times, but phone/text was not an issue. AT&T might need to step it up a bit.

My Verizon cellphone never missed a beat in 10+ calls per day.
Wi-fi was somewhat more challenging, but I didn't have high expectatations for free service while sitting in a field. I was always able to connect eventually, but sometimes had to change locations, type quickly, and hold my mouth just right.

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Originally Posted by Fred Stadler

My Verizon cellphone never missed a beat in 10+ calls per day.
Wi-fi was somewhat more challenging, but I didn't have high expectatations for free service while sitting in a field. I was always able to connect eventually, but sometimes had to change locations, type quickly, and hold my mouth just right.

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Fred, is the phone you use from Verizon a smart phone or a simple cellular phone with text messaging capability and limited internet functionality? Glad to hear you were not as challenged as others at the event.

Also, are you by chance the gentleman participating in the restoration of the early 20th century Bleriot (sp?)?

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Originally Posted by Unwiredone

Fred, is the phone you use from Verizon a smart phone or a simple cellular phone with text messaging capability and limited internet functionality? Glad to hear you were not as challenged as others at the event.

Also, are you by chance the gentleman participating in the restoration of the early 20th century Bleriot (sp?)?

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I was using a stone-age Motorola Razor - no Angry Birds, just phone calls.
And, yes, I was among the many volunteers helping with EAA's replica Bleriot XI. Watch for an article about its construction and (brief!) flight in the September issue of Sport Aviation.

My Verizon iPhone worked fine. My husband's AT&T iPhone didn't.

What a pity, cell phone service was so bad that I had to spend my time looking at airplanes and listening to airplanes and people talking about airplanes. Maybe soon there will be a super I phone-Ipod-Ipad that can simulate it all no matter where I am and it won't be necessary to leave New York or L A to waste valuable time looking at airplanes when I could be talking to or reading a gadget. I wonder what people did for entertainment back in the early EAA airshow days before there were no cell phones?