Wayne D's Blog

TwestivalTO: Can anyone provide an open WiFi hotspot at CiRCA without using the building connection? Need our bandwidth stable for displays. #TwestivalTO
@TwestivalTO If you want stable connections use wires. You put too much WiFi in too small a space and nothing will work.
@TwestivalTO Conference wifi (which is sort of what you are talking about) is a pretty tough problem, good luck. I'm going to rely on my BB
TwestivalTO @wdawe We're definitely using wired connections for our displays, but are thinking abt folks w/o cellular data plans. Hence need for WiMAX.

So went the short twitter exchange with the TwestivalTO organizers in advance of the TwestivalTO. When I arrived at the event my Blackberry was working fine but when you pack four hundred people the majority of whom are using smartphones into a small space and they try to use them you soon see have close to the edge the cellular infrastructure is operating. At a certain point in the night Roger's EDGE network became overburdened and trying to post Twitter updates produced network failure messages. A twitter search reveals that Telus, Fido and Bell users also had problems. What does this say for the future of the wireless internet when 400 people can bring the cellular data network to it's knees? Wifi isn't much better, when I stream video from my family room to to my bedroom via wireless I occasionally run into such problems with wireless network congestion in my suburban neighbourhood that I have to copy the file locally to be able to watch it without interruption. LeWeb, the large European internet conference had a great deal of trouble providing wifi access at the conference this year.

Too much wireless data use in too small a space means trouble and this poses a huge challenge for the future of the always available, ubiquitous internet access that we are growing to expect. How our service providers address this challenge may ultimately determine their success as businesses. Capping data transfer in an attempt to manage infrastructure is a short term solution at best, the old type utilities have learned the hard way that they need to be able to handle peak demand. The new age wireless utilities also need to provide the level of service we have come to expect. They ignore this at their peril.