Colorado Convention Center: Decent Cell Coverage?

September 26, 2007 12:04 PM

What kind of cell phone reception do you get in Denver's Colorado Convention Center? We're possibly involved in a conference there in a few weeks, and a project we're doing hinges on coverage good enough to send and receive SMS in the convention center. I've heard that it's "spotty" in the below-ground parts of the center, but that could mean anything ... is it good enough to deal with hundreds of attendees bouncing text messages back & forth? Ideally, we need to know ASAP. =)
posted by migurski to technology (8 comments total)

Best bet would be to call the convention center or the organization hosting the conference.
posted by doorsfan at 12:33 PM on September 26, 2007

If you end up stuck with your placement and bad reception, perhaps something like this cell phone signal extender could help.
posted by todbot at 2:53 PM on September 26, 2007

You need to contact the cell service provider whose system you most expect to use (or a couple of them), and see if they'd be willing to put a microcell in or near the place temporarily.

They might, but it's not a sure thing. They can do it, but it's a pain, so they're probably not going to be eager. It's common to do that during some kinds of big events which would overload normal cell coverage (e.g. the Superbowl). And convention centers and stadiums are common places for that to happen.

...hundreds of attendees bouncing text messages back & forth...

Even if coverage was good when the place was empty, I'm concerned that such a large number of users in one small place might overload the cell (or cells) that normally provides coverage there.

That's why getting one or more microcells in would be a huge help. (By the way, for reasons which are not worth going into, that's a lot easier technically for Sprint or Verizon to do than it would be for Cingular AT&T.)
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 2:57 PM on September 26, 2007

I was there yesterday and Tmobile worked fine. My buddy has Verizon and said the signal was a little week yesterday.
posted by 4Lnqvv at 3:07 PM on September 26, 2007

Thanks guys! (hi Tod!)

The conference organizers are the ones who need to know. I'll check out the extenders, and see how they feel about getting the providers involved. I'm glad to hear that it seems to be okay over there, though. Correct me if I'm wrong, but SMS is much more bad-reception-tolerant than voice, right?
posted by migurski at 3:24 PM on September 26, 2007

The repeater that Todbot linked to is unlikely to be of any use to you.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 3:51 PM on September 26, 2007

migurski, please email me directly via my profile. I am more than happy to bring up that you are doing an SMS event and see if I can convince my company to utilize a cell on wheels if you are using our service. We do it for the convention center quite regularly.
posted by Octoparrot at 7:15 PM on September 26, 2007

Also, SMS works great in spotty coverage areas. They are extremely small packets of data compared to trying transmit a voice call.
posted by Octoparrot at 7:16 PM on September 26, 2007