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.

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.

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...)

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.

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.

I used an iphone with ATT. Spotty service and best often no service period. I attended Wednesday through Friday.

AT&T iPhone. No data connection at all when I was there on Friday and very spotty (unusable) voice connections.

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.

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.

I was a volunteer at KidVenture at Pioneer Airport and ATT about drove me to distraction. If I turned off the phone's 3G service, I could get somewhat adequate service, with text working most of the time. Voice was awful, though. I found a sweet spot out by where General Delivery was parked, and even then I had to be oriented just right to hold the signal, basically facing a heading of 220. However, I very rarely got a signal inside the Pioneer Hangar (thank you Kathy Hanson and others for your patience in trading messages!).

Some friends and I rented a house out on Rolling Green Circle, as we have for a couple of years. Interestingly enough, coverage was horrible out there, too. We found that, on the drive to and from the venue, the best service was on South Oakwood between 9th and 20th then down to US41. Also, we got fair service from ATT north of the airport and east of 41.

I was at KOSH until Monday noon, thanks to the line that tried to blow in during the volunteer wind down. I noticed that the signal strength on my phone improved all day Sunday and Monday morning as folks left. I have no idea how cell towers propagate and manage signals (I would think signal strength would be constant, regardless of utilization) but that says something, I think, about network capacity.

As for my iPad? No way was it getting data. Fortunately, one of my fellow renters was able to set up a hot spot at our hosts' home using their digital cable.

As I mentioned to Hal on the old forums, you would think that the ATT network managers would have noticed a gigantic spike in the Oshkosh/Fon du Lac/Appleton area at around this time of year by now. In my company, I work in an area called Network Design and we plan service for our customers around seasonal spikes, as well as spot issues (e.g. Midwest river floods this year). I know that phone/data use a very different infrastructure than providing rail service, but a network is a network. Providing excellent customer service can be done with some forethought.

Has anyone at EAA considered contacting AT&T. (or other local cell phone carriers), and requesting that they supply some extra Mobile Cell Phone access points, at Oshkosh, during the event.

With such a large event, and so many AT&T customers getting bad service at Oshkosh, it would help them retain existing customers, and would be a good promotional & PR move for them, to attarct new customers.

Same goes for Internet Access. It is not uncommon for Comcast to supply FREE cable Internet to large events, as part of their marketing.

However, like many things these days, if you don't ask, you will never know, if you could have got it.

Geoff

The WiFi was a 100% failure. Even before the show opened I was never able to get a connection through it. I carry both AT&T and Verizon phones (can't get work and my personal life to get together). Neither was particularly reliable but at least I had a shot trying both carriers.

I had only minor slowness with AT&T/iphone on Monday, Saturday, or Sunday... for data over 3G/texting - I don't recall any phone calls tho.

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Originally Posted by BruceR

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.

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I know for fact that Verizon had at least one COW at the event, located on the west side of the airport between the EAA HQ and the main event, yet oddly, the COW did not appear to be properly positioned from a vertical stand-point. The coverage it was augmenting was minimal at best. Yes, I realize that the COW vertical antenna in particularly has challenges from a total height perspective due to the proximity of the airport operations, yet if you had viewed its position, you would have noticed that the COW was lower than the immediate cellular towers located adjacent to the placement.

However, COW's are not always the best solution from a Network perspective. In layman terms, a COW must be positioned and coordinated with the macro network so as not to cause issues elsewhere on the network.

I saw two other COW deployments on the grounds of the convention, yet cannot speak to which carrier asset each was. I just know that each was not [ours].

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Originally Posted by FSMP

Has anyone at EAA considered contacting AT&T. (or other local cell phone carriers), and requesting that they supply some extra Mobile Cell Phone access points, at Oshkosh, during the event.

With such a large event, and so many AT&T customers getting bad service at Oshkosh, it would help them retain existing customers, and would be a good promotional & PR move for them, to attarct new customers.


Same goes for Internet Access. It is not uncommon for Comcast to supply FREE cable Internet to large events, as part of their marketing.

However, like many things these days, if you don't ask, you will never know, if you could have got it.

Geoff

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I can unequivocally share that YES, the EAA has been in contact with the wireless services providers. John Carrier, the IT Director for the EAA, has been performing his due diligence and working hard on behalf of all the EAA Attendee's at AirVenture to deliver the best service possible from each wireless carrier, yet not every wireless carrier has (obviously) stepped up to the plate. In addition to John Carrier, Jeff Kaufman, Director of Business Development for the EAA has also been engaging with the wireless services providers to augment John's efforts. Poor wireless connectivity issues from the National wireless carriers perspective is not an EAA deliverable issue, yet the EAA is doing the best that it can to mitigate the issues.

In my original disclosure statement, I shared that I am from a National Carrier and also had with me our Network Manager (Actually Network Performance Manager) at AirVenture 2011. Due to our direct engagement, and the EAA reaching out and sharing experiences had by previous attendee's, my carrier invested more than the cost of a brand new Cessna 162 just for AirVenture 2011 - and prior to the event to ensure that our customers had connectivity and a positive experience. From anecdotal and network performance evidence, we delivered. Our existing infrastructure more than adequately covers Oshkosh and the surrounding areas for 51 weeks of the year, yet this year, we significantly bolstered data capacity to address the onslaught of smart-phone and tablet type devices. I will assure you that we are not a GSM carrier - such as AT&T or T-Mobile.

I might be able to guess...my buddy's push to talk service on his Nextel (Sprint) seemed to work flawlessly during the event.

As in years past, the cellular providers have a direct contractual obligation to their customers. EAA has not entered into a service agreement with any cellular company as it pertains to general AirVenture service, nor are we likely to pursue one (simply given EAA has virtually no control over service levels or coverage areas). IT is aware of general user dissatisfaction (although IT has no visibility into actual metrics) and understands the ramifications this has on the event; therefore, IT:

1) contacts the area’s major cellular providers (e.g., AirFire Mobile, AT&T, Cellcom, Sprint, U.S. Cellular, and Verizon) to better understand their user assessment of service, and steps they are taking (or have taken) to prepare for AirVenture
2) encourages each provider to examine their support of the event and make appropriate adjustments
3) redirects service feedback to the appropriate providers after the event

FlyingRon - I'm sorry to hear that your Wi-Fi experience was unacceptable. Were you aware of our deployment this year (see http://eaaforums.org/showthread.php?53-Wi-Fi-AV2011)? We're always working to improve our services, so any specifics you can share regarding where and how you were trying to access the Wi-Fi would be greatly appreciated. Feel free to contact me directly.

I got a strong WIFI signal indication, but neither my DELL laptop NOR my iPhone would connect successfully to the network. I was down in Vintage behind the hangar cafe.

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Originally Posted by jcarrier

FlyingRon - I'm sorry to hear that your Wi-Fi experience was unacceptable. Were you aware of our deployment this year (see http://eaaforums.org/showthread.php?53-Wi-Fi-AV2011)? We're always working to improve our services, so any specifics you can share regarding where and how you were trying to access the Wi-Fi would be greatly appreciated. Feel free to contact me directly.

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John, I know for fact that due to carrier network issues (I shall not name names), many used the EAA free Wi-Fi network to attempt connectivity when no coverage was available from [their] carrier. I will share that I was able to connect and numerous locations with relative ease from my iPad and from my mobile HTC device, yet did have some challenges inside the main exhibit hangars on one occasion. You and your team did a good job all things considered and SG even commented favorably to such.

FlyingRon - Imagine that..... :D

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Originally Posted by FlyingRon

I got a strong WIFI signal indication, but neither my DELL laptop NOR my iPhone would connect successfully to the network. I was down in Vintage behind the hangar cafe.

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To provide a high-capacity, robust backbone for the Wi-Fi access points, EAA has invested heavily in laying fiber optic cable on the grounds. Unfortunately, we are unable to lay fiber across all areas given the expense. The Vintage/Hangar location is not on the fiber network - it was serviced by a phone line with a consumer-grade DSL appliance. Your problem could have been caused by one of two things:
1) The appliance didn't have enough IP addresses to serve demand. This location was heavily used during inclement weather. Given it is consumer-grade, the appliance simply doesn't provide the same level of management and administrative tools that professional-grade appliances provide.
2) The phone line was down at the time you were attempting to access the Wi-Fi (we saw failure of the lines of both the Vintage/Hangar and Ultralight areas during the rain on Wednesday).

We did offer other locations on the grounds for Wi-Fi access. Did you try any of those?

The hangars A, B, C, D, and E were set up as vendor-only Wi-Fi. They had a different SSID and required a password to access. No public Wi-Fi was officially being offered in those areas (although signals from other access points may have provided some level of public service).

Nope, I had no cause to wifi other than Vintage Flight Line Ops and my camp site, both evidentally in the bogus area of the EAA network.
You mean that given that horrendous trench they dug across the classic taxiway and left a muddy collapsing mess didn't get us any improved service?

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Originally Posted by jcarrier

The hangars A, B, C, D, and E were set up as vendor-only Wi-Fi. They had a different SSID and required a password to access. No public Wi-Fi was officially being offered in those areas (although signals from other access points may have provided some level of public service).

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I in fact was able to log-on from inside an Exhibit hangar.

My wife and I both have AT&T phones (hers is an iPhone, mine an Android phone). We both had poor cell phone service for both data and voice throughout most of our stay (Wed through Sunday). Sometimes in the late evenings - say after 10:00pm - we were able to get a decent data connection and when we were desperate enough to try multiple times to get a phone call through, we could usually eventually get one out (i.e. if I tried to make a call a half dozen times within 30 minutes or so, I could get through maybe on the last try).

In contrast, for us, the WiFi worked pretty well. It didn't always work, and it was sometimes slow, but it was so much more reliable than the AT&T service that it seemed great in comparison. This was mainly in the N40 camping area but also occasionally throughout the grounds.

Cell service on Verizon was flawless. Verizon Droid X Hotspot for internet a bit slow to connect but stable when it did. Decent speed. EAA Wireless connection useless for more than a few minutes.

AT&T iphone - No probems with calls or wifi on Monday.

I've got Sprint service, and I believe I only had one call that didn't go through. Of course I don't know if the problem was on my end, or the other. An immediate redial got it through. 3G data seemed to be fine, although I do have a Touch Pro 2 phone which is kinda slow running Windows 6.5.

I have an HTC EVO on Sprint...... coverage and service throughout the grounds was very good. Some of that may be due to the fact that I was there from Saturday to Tuesday evening, so I may have missed the peak demand later in the week. For the time I was there, both data and voice service were extremely reliable.

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?