Wi-Fi at Conferences
Evert a Wi-Fi guru from the deep south (of Ireland) writes this morning about poor Wi-Fi at conferences
All the net & web heads of the world seem to have gathered at “Le Web” 09 in Paris. While I think that conferences like this are great for people to meet in realtime and for start-ups to showcase their products I am again disgusted by the reports coming from Paris on the disfunctional wifi at the conference.
Feedback through Twitter indicates that the wifi is more down than up. This is not the first time as the wifi at last years events was innitially just as bad. It is also not the only technology conference with lacking connectivity. TechCrunch had similar problems and it seems to be the norm that working wifi is more a sporadic luxury than an essential service at most conferences.
Matt another Wi-Fi guru from Bangor and a fellow OpenCoffeeBelfast member continues by saying
Hm, hold on there. WiFi connectivity was spotty at OCC BBQ and wasn’t that you I saw in a suit pottering around with WiFi access points at the Digital Island Meetup/BizSpark Launch in November? I couldn’t get connected to WiFi there either. It’s not kosher to throw stones and I’m not throwing stones here – I’ve previously documented my own experiences with WiFi at events.
The problem is, in my opinion, shitty equipment. Whether it’s the oft-documented Free Public WiFi misfeature (Thanks, Microsoft) or the fact that some people don’t turn off their torrent applications when they connect to public wifi – I’ve seen it happen. All WiFi equipment is made by the lowest bidder. It’s all turd. And it’s worse when Windows creates ad-hoc networks at random without permission. That’s just arsehole behaviour.
The problem is… WiFi is shit.
Wi-Fi is not shit ….. However at conferences and in general ‘Free Wi-Fi’ hotspots, Wi-Fi is generally installed on the cheap. What is needed to run a successful Wi-Fi hotspot, temporary or perminant is
- A good DSL backhawl with plenty of bandwidth
- A quality modem and router
- Descend APs
- Good support, or someone on site that know what they are doing when users computers start playing silly buggers
- NO FILESHARING !!!
The problem with ‘Free Wi-Fi‘ is that someone has to pay for it, The equipment, the backhawl, the support etc etc etc and as a location is not making any revenue from the service, in most cases they opt for a cheap solution. No Wi-Fi at all is better than a poor Wi-Fi service.
Thats all i’m saying
Russell,
I agree with you that quite a few free hotspots lack in quality and management.
However it doesn’t have to be like that. WiFi access is a service that people come to expect more and more from certain venues. The costs are so low (a few euro a day really) that it puts those operators charging ridiculous amounts for access (and no BitBuzz is not one of those) in a very bad light. As an example: I stayed in the Dublin Four seasons recently and wifi access was 22 euro a pop. Lunacy!
Anyway, yes the service needs to be managed and supported but the venue can pay for that just as they pay for cleaners and water to flush the toilets. This can be done without directly charging the user. It would make more sense to recoup the costs via a minimal increase in the charges for their other products or services.
I agree totally, wifi should be a ‘free’ service. I’ve stayed in some hotels in the last few months and have found the more exclusive the hotel, the more expensive the wifi. At BarCamp Belfast earlier this year @cimota was trying his best to fight against both the “Free Public Wifi” and bittorrent
Russell, it seems the US government agrees with you: http://howtogetwifi.com/commerce-free-is-bad/
Evert : I never said ‘Free was bad’ as long as people realise that someone has to pay for it and nothing is for nothing, as you say yourself its just paid for in a different way
‘This can be done without directly charging the user. It would make more sense to recoup the costs via a minimal increase in the charges for their other products or services.’
Andrew, Hotel charging should be reflective of the price of your room, you can’t really expect to get free Wi-Fi in Travelodge where you have to pay to borrow a hairdryer, as the price of the room goes up, the price of extras should come down. Although it appears you have been finding the opposite, the more you pay, the more you pay ! it seems !
With regard to Wi-Fi at events like barcamp, if Matt sets up Wi-Fi as a favour and it crashes because of some bandwidth thieves then fairplay, at least the thought was there! On the other hand tho if a company is being paid to set it up, it should either be done correctly or not at all !
You bring up a good point there, “as a favour” a lot of smaller conferences have someone like Matt trying to help out and end up getting the flak when something doesn’t work out. I appreciate the time people put in for these events and although I want my wifi as much as the next person, I hope to never reach the point where it is expected or complain when someone has volunteered to do it off their own bat.
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