How to Avoid Event Bandwidth Bust
Understanding the Internet demands of your attendees is crucial
By Ruth A. Hill
Along with running water, electricity and AC, a robust Wi-Fi offering is often something planners and their groups take for granted at any meeting venue they buy these days.
Attendees arrive with multiple mobile devices in hand, along with the assumption they’ll have good Internet connect wherever they meet, sleep and eat--just like comfortable ventilation. But while attendees may take good bandwidth capacity--the maximum data transfer rate of a network or Internet connection--for granted, planners simply cannot.
Meetings are increasingly technology-driven, with streaming video presentations and heavy Internet usage by attendees and trade show floor exhibitors. To keep all the data moving at an acceptable rate, it’s as important to do advance bandwidth planning as it is to organize guest room blocks, F&B and transportation. To miss this significant piece of today’s planning process can bring event disaster, or at least a lot of negatives on attendee evaluations.
Yet while planners, venue managers and tech people share responsibility for delivering the Wi-Fi capacity everyone expects to “just be there,” many are unprepared to start the conversation that addresses necessary bandwidth requirements.
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Can that venue fulfill your bandwidth needs?
AV Event Solutions reminds planners that good Wi-Fi for attendees and other event stakeholders is no longer an optional perk.
The California-based event services company says the following questions give planners and others a non-tech approach to determining whether a venue can provide the proper Wi-Fi for their event. The questions are useful whether you’re interviewing venue staff, a Wi-Fi company or a Wi-Fi consultant:
Step 1:
1. Have they done similar events?
2. How many people attended those events?
3. Were attendees using multiple devices?
4. How much dedicated bandwidth will be available to your group?
5. Will Wi-Fi be available 24/7?
6. Will there be a qualified technician on-site, who you can easily reach, during the entire event?
7. Will Wi-Fi be available in hotel rooms and conference rooms or just conference rooms?
8. What is the capacity in each of the rooms?
9. What is the minimum signal in each room?
10. Will the network be actively managed during the event?
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