AUSTIN, Texas–There was little carrier exposure in terms of physical presence at South by Southwest (SXSW) in Austin this year, which is largely a shame due to all the opportunities for collaboration and investment available for mobile carriers at the show. One carrier that definitely had a presence was AT&T Mobility, which made several moves to bolster the network’s data traffic and voice connections prior to the start of SXSW.
AT&T Mobility upgraded its broadband wireless network in downtown Austin this year to handle the massive number of visitors to the show.
After a deluge of angry calls and complaints two years ago during the festival, the carrier made big improvements last year, and said it prepared additional wireless spectrum and temporary and permanent cell sites this year to compensate for the sheer number of wireless devices in use.
AT&T Mobility supplemented one-third more radio wave spectrum, two permanent downtown cell towers and doubled the number of temporary cell sites. The company added a distributed antenna system at the Austin Convention Center, where most of the action for the Interactive Festival was housed, and installed fiber-optic Ethernet to run data traffic from cell sites to its telecommunications network. A temporary cell site at Auditorium Shores, a venue which may garner the largest numbers of visitors during the music portion of SXSW, will also empower the carrier’s network.
AT&T said it invested more than $325 million in its Austin wireless and wireline network from 2008 through 2010.The company said the improvements are part of the push to 4G being made in Austin this year but refused to cite what improvements to the network will cost in 2011.
Improvements in the greater Austin area include enhanced backhaul connections to approximately 250 cell sites to enable 4G speeds and add capacity to support mobile traffic, and replacement of more than 1,300 antennas at more than 200 cell sites across the city to support more traffic. The carrier will also install 18 new cell sites.
The investments arrive in the midst of a national battle regarding network quality and sustainability, highlighted by AT&T Mobility’s loss of exclusivity of the iPhone.
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