Small Business I.T. Insider

AT&T did something no one expected at South by SouthWest this year.  They did their job!

With the service disaster that was last year’s SXSW, no one expected AT&T would be able to deal with the even greater bandwidth and service needs of an even bigger show! But they did. With over 210,000 tech savvy attendees, all using the iPhones and other AT&T phones for Twitter, Facebook, blogging, uploading photos and making phone calls, this was no easy task but AT&T had a rock solid showing.

AT&T experienced a lot of problems last year with awful coverage and horrific data speeds and because of that the company has had really bad press during the last few years mostly due to their coverage issues in major cities, i.e. NY, SF and parts of LA.

That being said, clearly SXSW worked for them. Why? What did they do different? They prepared for it like it was the super bowl. They brought in a bunch of extra mobile antenna trucks and they FLOODED the place with signals. Good for them! I’m glad they finally figured out that, tech conventions NEEDS dependable wireless. Furthermore, they used 6 foot antennas. From what I understand this makes a big difference over the 2 foot ones. Places like Sanfrancisco only let 2 foot antennas to be installed, and they also complain about the service.  I think it would be a great idea if they installed 20 foot towers on every building in LA so we would have better network coverage.

All things considered I think AT&T is really putting their best foot forward. I highly doubt Verizon could do any better if they had the bandwidth drain that AT&T has with all its iPhone users. I mark this as a feather in the very beat up cap that is AT&Ts public image. Good for you AT&T! Keep it up so we don’t have to all switch over from our iPhones!