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3G and Mobile Data at Games - is there a "bottleneck?

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Karl

Bill McLean (32)
How does it work? Last night at Suncorp my phone would not do anything that involved Data and was dodgy with texts and calls but I had 4 bars of signal and 3G lit up according to the screen. Its an iPhone 4s on Optus.

Does the local tower just get overwhelmed with high volume use from a single concentrated point as people Instagram and Text and Facebook and Twitter and Foursquare? It wasn't just me - my daughters friend had the same issue (different carrier) and apparently the girls next to them couldn't log onto whatever site they were trying to use.

Putting aside the pathetic dependence and overuse of social networking and the deplorable situation where people at a Rugby game play with their smart phones instead of being absorbed in the game - whats going on?
 

Karl

Bill McLean (32)
Thought so - but its pretty pathetic. Surely they can implement strategies to cope. Its not like there are 1 million people trying to access data and make calls all at the same time - might be what out of 31,000? A few thousand? Probably a lot less. Its a massive public facility, the infrastructure near it should be robust enough to cope. My daughter and her friend got separated from me at the Gate on the way in when they kept walking as my bag got checked and I couldn't even get a call or text through to her to see where she got to. They did the right thing and found a couple cops at the concourse near our seats and waited, but still, not good enough really.
 

Schadenfreude

John Solomon (38)
Dare I say... The NBN may help.

With the number of blackberrys iPhone's and ice cream sandwiches constantly checking email, it's an impressive achievement to get anything at all.

I'm sure someone will also say something about interference with so many devices on the same range etc.

In any case, it's the phone companies that are responsible.
 

Sully

Tim Horan (67)
Staff member
I had the same problem Karl. Just trying to tweet my peeps ( I am sooo popular) and couldn't get anything to work. I know Suncorp tried free WiFi last year during the finals but when I tried that it was at a stand still as well.
 

Karl

Bill McLean (32)
It was so bad I wasnt getting or sending SMS's and people said they tried to call me and couldn't get a connection. When voice and data both grind to a halt at a football game there must be some sort of infrastructure issue.
 

Schadenfreude

John Solomon (38)
Voice is data these days. I'm wondering what it costs to supply a service for 30k + people for 10 days a year.
 

matty_k

Peter Johnson (47)
Staff member
Optus usually clogs up before Relates does at events.
Optus has talked about rolling out mobile towers for large events but I haven't seen or heard of it happening yet.
 

Schadenfreude

John Solomon (38)
I can't see the business case for it.

No more profit, much more expense, competitors aren't doing it, and (this may come as a surprise) telcos don't give a shit about anyone.
 

suckerforred

Chilla Wilson (44)
I only try to use the system at half time. But after however many games I give up. Feel sorry for people who are trying to find others like you Karl.
 
C

Cave Dweller

Guest
lol 3G is not real internet my friend. It emulates TCP/IP. So networks compress images and send ack messages before connections are actually made. To get onto the internet it have to make use of arp proxies. Seeing that you say you had problems with text messages will tell you it was a network problem and not a problem to do with bandwidth. Text works with a message center and not done via data connections like Email. There might have been a problem with the networks servers at the time. Btw 4G is not really 4G. It is just 3G on coffee.
 

Schadenfreude

John Solomon (38)
lol 3G is not real internet my friend. It emulates TCP/IP. So networks compress images and send ack messages before connections are actually made. To get onto the internet it have to make use of arp proxies. Seeing that you say you had problems with text messages will tell you it was a network problem and not a problem to do with bandwidth. Text works with a message center and not done via data connections like Email. There might have been a problem with the networks servers at the time. Btw 4G is not really 4G. It is just 3G on coffee.

Drinking much?
 

Bowside

Peter Johnson (47)
A trick I use to use at big events was to switch my phone off 3G onto the old network. Worked a charm at big day out a few years back.

I dont know if you can do it with iphones I've never really tried.
 
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