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Making the pipes faster

• Darren Waters
• 16 Mar 09, 18:12 GMT

One of the most common complaints echoing around SXSW this year is regarding iPhone use.

Unsurprisingly, given the background of many of the attendees there are a lot of iPhone users at the festival and many people have been complaining of poor reception and very slow 3G speeds.

I've heard from two sources who have now told me that AT&T hurriedly despatched two engineers to Austin after it was discovered iPhone data usage was accounting for 90% of network capacity in the area.

Apparantly, AT&T were in the midst of upgrading the network here anywhere and we caught on the hop by the sudden surge in data usage.

Stacey Higginbotham from GigaOm got the first official confirmation of the problem yesterday.

A statement from AT&T to GigaOm said: "To accommodate unprecedented demand for mobile data and voice applications at SXSW, we are actively working this afternoon to add capacity to our cell sites serving downtown Austin."

Unprecendented demand? It might be unprecendented but did AT&T not think that 10,000 geeks in one space at the same time might have some impact on its network?

As SF author William Gibson said: "The future is already here. It's just not very evenly distributed."

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