AT&T comes in swinging, hopes to hit a home run at SXSW

By on Mar 2, 2010 at 3:19 PM
News March 2, 2010

att-sxsw

After last year’s embarrassment at SXSW, AT&T is going overboard to ensure a similar wireless network meltdown does not happen again this year at the annual technology conference in Austin, Texas. To avoid a second such disaster, AT&T is throwing a ton of cash and bringing in an equal amount of equipment for the SXSW conference including:

  • Installing a Distributed Antenna System (DAS) at the Austin Convention Center. The DAS is comprised of 50 antenna nodes that provide the equivalent coverage of eight cell sites.
  • Improving the cell sites in the surrounding area by utilizing 30MHz of spectrum for 3G instead of the standard 10MHz and upgrading the system to include the 850MHz band and HSPA.
  • Bringing in three temporary cell sites that are positioned in areas expected to see high traffic.
  • Improving the backhaul by beefing up the fiber optic connections that serve the eight cell sites of the DAS and the three temporary sites. According to sources within AT&T, the backhaul capacity has seen a fourfold increase.

The stakes are high for AT&T as a network failure could wipe away any gains in consumer confidence AT&T saw following its favorable review from PC World last week. With its reputation on the line, will AT&T and its 3G network rise to the occasion or will it crumble to its knees under the strain of a mob of iPhone-toting geeks? Predictions are welcome in the comments.

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48 Comments

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  • haha

    lol, you werent
    lmao

  • DaveNYC

    in soviet russia the cell sites are putting up more at&t

  • Phonewhore

    Installing a DAS is no small feat. This just shows that ATT takes network quality seriously. Why are no other carriers doing this? Cost! Enjoy your EVDO-REV As I get faster data speeds and simultaneous voice/data on my iPhone!

    • bill

      srsly? any major telecom has a customer solution department that can do this. Welcome to adequacy, at&t

    • VZW

      Verizon spends much more on its network then AT&T does so don’t even start that crap.

      • yourmom

        no they don’t…

  • NathanielEssex

    This comment has been seriously disliked. Click here to see.

  • chris

    @VZW,

    who’s the one trying to start crap. the truth is none of us really know who is spening more on their network.

    here’s what we do know: Verizon Wireless has invested around $55 Billion since 2000. this is according to o e of their own press releases from Jan 2010.

    AT

  • Fone_Fanatic

    I live in austin and with my HTC device (think it was a kaiser at the time) didn’t see much downtime during tech part of sxsw. But my brother who had an iPhone at the time had reception what so ever.

    I think they learned their lesson and will be ready.

  • bubbarob

    @Pjc…right on…who cares about dumping a ton of money into the temporary network at conference event…..how bout throwing some cash/equipment into the rest of the network that everyday people use on a daily basis…what a joke!

  • Skurfa

    Looks like maybe Clear covers the Convention Center area? If so, Sprint and Clear should be crawling all over the place showing off some real speed. Maybe with crap tons of the Overdrive mini-hotspots running so the iPhone boys can run their Skype over Sprint,

  • Squirrel

    Way to do your name proud.

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