Suggestion for FON
Written on February 22, 2007 by Conor O'Neill
Given the lack of free wireless at FoWA and the disastrous wireless at LeWeb3, it struck me yesterday that conferences are the ideal opportunity for FON to give people real hands-on experience of their routers.
Imagine if the guys had provided all the wifi for free yesterday? They could still use the logon screens so they get the branding opportunities but it would have been such a coup! Maybe an idea for some of the upcoming European conferences?
Or maybe offer it non-free to most people and free as usual to FONeros with the strong message that if you become a FONero, you’ll get it free at the next conference
Hey Antoin - how about a trial run at the Irish Blog Awards on March 3rd?
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Forget about Fon, I’ll do it!
If any of the people involved with the Irish Blog Awards read this and are interested in high bandwidth dependable wifi coverage for the event they can contact me.
The same goes for organisers for similar events. For the next 3 months we will provide, install and configure the wifi network for any event that meets our criteria..
E.
Great offer Evert! TBH, I don’t know whether the hotel for the IBA has it’s own free wifi or not.
Well, it’s very easy to do it. But there has to be a big enough broadband connection available, and that’s hard to arrange at short notice. (Expensive too, if it’s only for one event.
Obviously it can’t be done without the agreement of the owners of the hotel.
Although a simple setup is easy enough, catering for a large number of users at an event is no joke. The bandwidth management, etc. takes a good bit of organization.
I think the hotel might be the blocker on this as they have their own non-free Wifi. Pity.
The disaster of LeWbe3 shows how the bandwidth management bit can bite a conference badly.
Of course you could apply the Starbucks plan here and provide FON routers to every building in the vicinity
How far to the nearest TCD building?
The nearest TCD building is about 50 feet away, but it’s just a shed. There’s one of the dental buildings a bit further, but it’s really too far. Also, we are talking about a basement in the Alexander, which (I think) is built of reinforced concrete.
If you were feeling guerilla about it, you could probably repeat the hotel’s broadband with dd-wrt or similar.
Ah, my wife did her MSc in Mechanical Engineering in that dental building!
Bloody dd-wrt - love the features, hate the throughput.
Guess we’ll have to play by the rules.
And was there WiFi coverage?
And did it work?
E.
I actually don’t know. It really wasn’t a laptop-type gig in any case. I barely got time to twitter!
Laptop?!
Who needs a laptop to use WiFi?!
That’s sooo last year….
E.
So true! Still hankering for that Vodafone/HTC Compact III.
I think one person tried to do it with their XDA but failed.