If you’re holding an event that usually involves lots of people – and, although most people are used to using their phone signal to get online, it may depend on how good the signal is in the area where your event is taking place – it can mean little or no off-site broadband connection.

If you’re off-site and you still need to be connected you don’t want to experience the situation one business exhibition had.  They turned up at the venue (a well-known convention and concert centre) to discover phone signals were rubbish at the venue and, although they were assured that there was WiFi, it wasn’t up to 50 people all trying to get online at the same time.

There is a whole host of issues when you need to set up reliable broadband – and sometimes phone services on a site where you are representing your organisation.

• Do you want people to pay for their WiFi connection? If so, you’ll need a subscription and password system.
• Are people going to be moving around? What area does the WiFi need to cover?
• How will you manage when a lot of people in one location want to access the internet at the same time? Everyone trying to access it at once slows it down; but equally, one person downloading a big file can slow the connection down for everyone.
• Is there a means of balancing the access out with a number of access points so everyone gets a consistent and reliable signal?

There’s a lot of skill behind setting up broadband connections on a remote site, it’s not just a case of having a signal.  We use special software that allows us to move people from one access point to another, when one gets busy.

If someone is walking around the site the system can ensure they get a consistent signal and retains their IP address so the network sees them in as in one place, but our system actually passes them to the nearest access point with the best signal.

That’s just the WiFi signal, but when you’ve got an event at a location where there is no phone connection available, that can also be set up.  Although phone systems in these locations are based on broadband, they usually use cable to make the connections, simply to ensure high quality of voice signal.  WiFi can be used for phone systems, but the quality of the audio tends to deteriorate fast.

One of our clients uses our phone system at remote locations for telephone bidding during auctions – and it works perfectly as a cabled system.

So, if you’re planning an event that needs good connections, talk to a specialist (our number is 01702 668730).