UPDATE: SXSW killing AT&T in Austin?

sxswOne of the most interesting geek gatherings is happening just up the road from me in Austin this weekend.  SXSW is becoming a huge event drawing thousands of geeks from all over the world to Austin, most arriving in the “nerd-birds” that fly in every few minutes during the event.  SXSW defies description but most who attend will have to admit that it’s basically a good excuse for a massive city-wide party with like-minded geeks.  I guess I’m going to have to get myself to Austin next year to attend.

It is no surprise that today we are seeing reports of Twitter being saturated with tweets by attendees.  Twitter has become the de-facto standard mode of communication at the event as attendees let their homies know where they are, where they’ve been and which party they are heading to next.  It should thus be no surprise that one of the results of this mass geek convergence is that many are reporting that AT&T service is getting slammed.  There are reports of no service, dropped calls and the inability to send/receive text messages around Austin.

This is probably due to the fact that SXSW attendees rely on cell phones to communicate.  This is done via Twitter as explained, text messages, phone calls and web surfing.  Our own Stacey Higginbotham noticed this, remarking that cell phones are the new notebook at SXSW.

This doesn’t surprise me at all; I saw the same thing happen at the CES this year in Las Vegas.  The iPhone has brought a lot of customers to AT&T and a lot of these customers attend these geek events.  I remember how frustrating it was to go to make a call or send a text message at the CES only to find there was no service due to network saturation. I know these big events are special things, but carriers like AT&T know that too, and there are ways they can temporarily bump up local coverage to deal with the saturation. Other networks seem to handle this better than AT&T, so come on, get with the program. Geeks need to tweet.

UPDATE: Stacey tells us at GigaOM that AT&T has responded to her post and will beef up the network in Austin beginning tonight.  SXSWers will be able to Tweet again.  The power of the internet raises its head once again.  :)

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